


It's For Real, I Swear

by ishipitsobad



Series: Please Believe Me [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: College AU, Dorks, I'll add more tags later, Insecurity, M/M, Modern settings, Multi, Self Esteem Issues, Suicide Attempt, Trigger Warnings, artist!marco, chubby!marco, coach!Erwin, coach!Levi, fighter!Jean, first fic ever, mutual unrequited love, nerds, pls be kind, self deprecation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 36,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1713671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishipitsobad/pseuds/ishipitsobad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To say Marco is on the big side is an understatement; he's had to live with the insecurities and insults of being fat for all his life. In high school, the insults only get worse, and Marco finds refuge in two things: his art, and stalking Jean Kirschstein.<br/>Jean Kirschstein is everything Marco isn't: popular, cool, sharp-witted and incredibly hot. Like, drool-worthy hot. And he doesn't even know Marco exists (or so it seems).<br/>Upon entering university, things are about to change. Marco and Jean are roommates, and both are in for a journey of a lifetime that will encompass self-acceptance, love, hope and everything good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At the Beginning of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> My first time publishing a fic here! Please leave comments and whatnot (constructive criticism please)! I just ADORE jeanmarco and cannot get enough of it. I cite johannathemad, butterflychansan, lownly and many more as my inspiration! (will mention more as fic progresses)

Ever since he first laid eyes on him in freshman year, Marco had harbored the most ridiculous, devoted and blindly passionate crush on Jean Kirschstein.

He had no idea how it had started, but ever since the legendary brawl between Jean and some anger-management-issues kid named Eren Jaeger, he couldn’t help searching for the teen with a two-toned undercut and sharp amber eyes in the corridor between classes. And when he found what he was looking for, his heart rate jacked up and he would get that fluttery feeling in his gut. It was unmistakable: he was head over heels for Jean Kirschstein.

By the time he was a senior, Marco knew everything there was to know about Jean Kirschstein without ever exchanging a word with him (all thanks to the innovation of social media in the 21st century). The guy didn’t even know he existed, and Marco already knew who his best friends were, what he liked to do in his free time, his favorites and even his moods day to day. He indulged himself in horribly fanciful fantasies wherein Jean was his boyfriend and they were madly in love. Sometimes they were erotic, and he found himself shamefully jacking off to it.

But reality was a bitch, and Marco knew that for all his illusory daydreams and stalking efforts… Jean Kirschstein would never be the slightest bit interested in someone like him.

He was a good 45 pounds heavier than the average high schooler, and it showed in the three rolls of flesh on his abdomen and chubby face. He attributed at least half of the weight to his mom’s insanely good culinary skills and her preference for serving Italian, mostly to please his Italian born-and-bred dad. The latter had given him the genes for enviably thick and soft black hair that he habitually and lazily kept in a centre-parting style, while from his mom he had inherited the splattering of freckles all over his anatomy. He didn’t doubt that if he checked, there would be freckles on his too-generous ass. People tended to avoid Marco for obvious reasons, whispering stereotypical insults like “fat-ass” and other unimaginative derogatory terms for the obese.

It hurt, of course, and for a while he entertained the idea of being home-schooled just to avoid it. But then that would mean never seeing Jean Kirschstein again, and that wasn’t worth it. That was just how much he was in love with Jean Kirschstein, despite his disappointing awareness that Jean was heterosexual and in love with someone else.

In sophomore year, it was widely known that Jean had the hots for Mikasa Ackerman, Eren Jaeger’s adopted sister. It was rumored that his crush on Mikasa had been the reason for the unending feud between the two. For a while, they appeared to be a thing. Marco once spotted Jean with his arm slung across Mikasa’s shoulders, walking across the parking lot to his car. The sensation in his chest upon sighting the scene was not unlike someone stomping on his heart in nine-inch stilettos.

Then the thing was over, and Jean was notoriously single after Mikasa apparently ended the relationship under duress from her adoptive brother and as a sign that the fling was over, she cut her beautiful jet-black hair. Jean appeared unaffected by it from what Marco could glean from his Twitter and Facebook statuses, but he had to be upset. Marco only wished he could offer some sort of comfort. He spent the whole of his high school life fading into the background, or as much as an obese student like him could. He cooped himself up in the art room during lunch, skipped PE entirely to avoid the humiliation and never raised his hand in class or got outstanding grades except for Art class. He dressed himself in oversized sweaters and nothing clingy so he could hide his body, and never changed in front of anyone.

He was content, mostly, with being anonymous and unknown and just watching Jean from afar. Then everything changed when he entered university.

Almost everyone he knew from high school went to the same university, as if by some pact they had agreed not to separate paths. Despite his mother’s protests, Marco made the unexpected decision to move into the dormitories. He didn’t really know why he did it either; self-conscious and obese that he was, he never quite liked the idea of sharing a room with a stranger who might end up being a total jerk to him. Until he read the name on the list of dormitory residents printed next to his under Room 208:

_Kirschstein, Jean._

* * *

 

  “… _oui_ ,” Jean pinched the bridge of his nose. It had a bump in it where it was slightly crooked from a break that had not been set properly. “ _Oui, maman. Tout est réglé_.”

He toed an empty cardboard box labelled “clothes”, eyeing the stack of unfolded garments taking up residence on the edge of his bed. His mother continued to nag and worry at him over the phone, and he muttered placating words in French as was the language his mother frequently used like right now.

  “And your room-mate?” Jean sat up straight when his mother switched to English. She spoke with an accent that wasn’t unpleasant, but made it very obvious that she wasn’t a native. “He has arrived?”

  “No,” he sighed. Marco Bodt. The name was vaguely familiar, like he’d skimmed over it in the yearbook. “Not yet—“

A muffled knock on the door had him lurching to his feet. “Ah, he is here. _Au revoir, maman. Je vais vous rappeler plus tard_.”

He hung up to the sound of his mother’s protests and nearly tripped over his junk to open the door. Whatever he was expecting to see, it certainly wasn’t a stack of boxes rather than a human being.

  “Sorry! Um- do you mind…?” Jean had absolutely no idea where the muffled voice was coming from, but he obliged it anyway by taking the top box. It was sealed shut and labelled “stuff” by someone with ridiculously beautiful handwriting.

Once he’d taken it, he could see the top of his new roommate’s head. Black hair, that looked shiny and soft to the touch, that had been carelessly parted down the middle by habit rather than intentional styling.

  “Thanks,” the voice was not quite as muffled now, but Jean shot out an arm to steady him when he very nearly stumbled over his own feet as he walked through the door. He barely touched Marco Bodt’s arm when he just jerked away, spewing apologies.

  “Dude,” Jean pitched his voice so he could be heard over his new (and apparently socially awkward) roommate’s apologies. “Just chill. Put your stuff down so I can actually get a look at you.”

Marco stiffened, and slowly put his boxes down. Jean was mildly taken aback by his new roomie’s appearance. The word _niedlich_ popped into his head, and he had to shake it before he said it out loud.

His new roommate was at least an inch or two taller than him, but unlike Jean whose body had been trained rigorously from daily regimes for years, he was undeniably _potelé_ , like his mother would say. He was wearing a large, oversized forest green knit sweater that didn’t quite hide his generous figure, and freckles adorned his chubby cheeks. He had almond-shaped eyes with chocolate brown irises and they could only be described as doe eyes, the kind you couldn’t help liking upon sight.

He was also very, very nervous.

  “Oh, hey,” Jean proferred a calloused hand, abruptly recalling his manners. His mother would have sighed and shaken her head in exasperation. “I’m Jean Kirschstein. Nice meeting you.”

Marco didn’t shake it immediately. He seemed to hesitate, then almost reluctantly put his hand (there were dimples where his knuckles should be, Jean noted. It was actually kind of adorable, like a baby’s hand) in Jean’s. “Hi. I’m Marco—um, Marco Bodt.”

  “You need any help getting your stuff sorted out?” Jean asked easily, looping his thumbs through the belt-loops of his jeans, which were fraying at the hems and the knees. “I took the left side of the room. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “It’s okay,” Marco mumbled, eyes cast downwards. Jean had to resist the urge to cup his face and force him to make eye contact. He loathed it when people talked to his feet rather than his face. Even Eren stupid Jaeger didn’t have that problem, although Jean wouldn’t mind shoving Eren’s stupid face in the direction of his feet. “I’m right-handed anyway, so I don’t mind.”

Jean blinked at the slight show of humour, and Marco peeked at Jean’s side of the room. “Besides, I think you need more help getting your stuff sorted out.”

Jean glanced back at his messy bed. “Right. I’ll get to that.”

Marco gave the smallest hint of a shy smile, and busied himself with his things. Jean stared at his new roommate for a little while longer before going back to attempt to sort his stuff out, feeling a myriad of feelings about Marco Bodt, and not quite sure what to make of it all.


	2. And So It Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Marco and Jean learn a lot about each other, and Jean makes a heroic effort to help Marco.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so introducing Christa/Ymir, Reiner/Bertl, Connie/Sasha relationships. There are mentions of sexuality stuff like hetero-normativity and hints of homophobia (I really don't know). Please don't be offended. Please comment if I need to change something.

Marco had assumed he'd known a lot about Jean Kirschstein. He knew that he was best friends with Connie Springer (majoring in digital design, in a steady relationship with Sasha Braus, who was majoring in nutrition and food science), that he was fluently trilingual, liked Mayday Parade and MMA, that his hair was naturally dark at the roots and light at the tips, and that in addition to the helix, lobe and eyebrow piercing he already had, he was considering getting a tongue piercing.

He didn't know French was quicker to Jean's tongue than German or English because his mom had spoken to him in French since he was born (he only began to learn English in preschool).

He didn't know Jean's dad was a German born and raised shipping magnate, founder of a shipping empire and the reason Jean was majoring in International Business Studies. Or that their parents had had a whirlwind romance and a shotgun marriage (of which Jean had been the product of). His mother was a French native, stubbornly set in her cultural ways and incredibly beautiful despite being nearly half a century old. 

He didn't know Evangeline was Jean's little sister (he'd always assumed she was some integral part of his life like a cat or some other pet, judging from his exasperated remarks about her on Twitter and Facebook), and that she looked nothing like him except for the same pale amber eyes they both inherited from their dad. She was a pretentious hipster who scorned mainstream media like Instagram and secretly idolised her big brother while pretending to be indifferent towards him. Although Jean made it sound like she annoyed him, Marco could easily observe that Jean adored his little sister as much as she adored him.

Most importantly, he hadn't known Jean Kirschstein was an absolute slob.

For one thing, Jean never seemed to know where the laundry hamper or his closet was. He left his clothes every-fricking-where: on the toilet floor, in the sink, on the back of his chair, on his bed, under his pillow, on the headboard of his bed and once, it had come oh-so-close to the closet but missed it by a few inches.

There was the cashmere cardigan that Marco seriously doubted Jean knew the value of (or appreciated even if he did know), the lone sock missing its estranged twin and the patched-up, old sweatpants Jean couldn't make up his mind about if he wanted to throw it away or keep it.

But occasionally it helped that Jean was messy: Marco had stolen (without consciously processing what he'd been doing) Jean's hoodie and kept it stashed under his bed, behind the box of art supplies. Sometimes at night, when Jean was out late with his friends doing God-knows-what or putting in extra practice, Marco would take it out and take a deep, long whiff of eau de Jean. He smelled faintly of woodsmoke, something spicy and manly (probably his aftershave) and what autumn would smell like if Marco could put a scent to it.

However, where Jean was careless about his garments, he was a pedantic nitpicker about other things. His desk was as neat as a pin and so was his shelf, where he kept not only his textbooks and notes but also his gear for MMA. He was on the university team, and apparently had a shot at nationals. And his red knit beanie was never far from his person, almost always capping his two-toned hair.

He was also a big fan of people Marco had never even heard of: Anderson Silva ("The Spider"), Georges St. Pierre ("Rush" and this one Jean seemed to admire more than the others) and Jon Jones ("Bones"). Jean wanted to be as good and as great as them, one day, and had articles and pictures of them on his share of the walls.

By comparison, Marco found himself falling short by comparison and incredibly boring. His dad was an office drone, his mom a regular housewife. He didn't know a proper sentence in Italian because his dad never had the time to teach him, had no real passions (to him, art was a way of passing time), didn't have any great sibling relationships to talk about and was a stickler for tidiness. They literally could not be more different.

Yet they got along, largely due to Jean's efforts. If Jean hadn't offered to walk back to the dorm with Marco on the days they ended at the same time, or made him promise to spend Friday evenings with him watching movies and eating pizza on his portable television, Marco would have been a recluse and continued to simply observe from afar.

Even so, all the time he spent with Jean was a curse under the disguise of a blessing.

He had spent so long fantasising about Jean, that when they spent time together in close quarters, Marco couldn't help blushing.

Like right now, when Jean and Marco were literally shoulder to shoulder on Jean's bed, the duvet wrapping them both together like a burrito as they watched _The A-Team_.

 _Please don't let me have a boner, now of all times_. was Marco's silent prayer.

Every time Jean so much as shifted to make himself more comfortable, Marco would stiffen. It wasn't long before Jean called him out on it.

  "Marco," Jean paused the movie, and with the silencing of explosions and witty comebacks, Marco felt trapped. "Is there something going on that you want to tell me?"

He shifted his gaze. "N-no."

Jean's pale amber eyes were almost luminous in the bright cast of the television screen. " _Marco_."

Marco ran through a million possible ways to reply to that, and most of them were unspeakable.  _I'm desperately in love with you, and every time we make body contact I literally want you to fuck me._

Nope, definitely unspeakable. So he fell back on his usual excuse, which wasn't really an excuse.

  "I'm just worried I'm squishing you," Marco mumbled, looking away. "Since I'm--"

  "Okay, now you can shut up," Jean snapped. Marco flinched, and Jean softened his voice. "Look, we've been over this a million times. The way you are has nothing to do with what I think of you. If I didn't like you, do you really think I'd be spending my Friday nights with you, watching flicks and eating pizza? Or spending time with you at all?"

Marco mumbled something incoherently.

  "I hate Eren," Jean continued the tirade, one Marco had heard at least six times now. "And I can't stand to be in the same room as him. I  _like_ you, Marco. So stop worrying about whatever."

When Jean said "like", Marco felt a rush of hope, followed shortly by a keen sense of disappointment. Jean was straight, in love with Mikasa Ackerman, and there was definitely no way Jean's "like" would ever be the same as Marco's "like".

* * *

 

Jean liked Marco.

He'd never really questioned his own sexuality, but since he'd met Marco he'd slowly began to doubt that he was really as heterosexual as he'd assumed he was. The crush on Mikasa Ackerman had been short-lived (there was nothing quite as repulsive as an obsession with Eren Jaeger), but even then he'd naturally thought he was straight.

  "That'd be hetero-normativity," Christa gently put, cupping her hands around the white mug of hot chocolate. It was sweet, like Christa's general image. And that attracted people like Ymir, whose aloof harshness and acerbic tongue was a polar opposite to her girlfriend's appealing geniality.

  "I don't know," Jean admitted. "This is my first time having these kind of feelings for someone, especially a guy. I mean, I don't have the urge to kiss Connie or Reiner."

  "Thank God for that," Connie muttered into his macchiato, his other hand clasping Sasha's hand. The latter was oblivious and had what looked like three croissants in her mouth. She could try for the Guinness World Records for Most Amount of Food In Mouth or something.

  "Do you have the urge to bend this Marco of yours over a table and fuck him stupid?" Reiner said bluntly, a suggestive smirk on his face as his boyfriend Bertholdt fairly squirmed in his seat, turning red and sweaty with embarrassment.

  "Keep it in your pants, Reiner," Jean was long used to Reiner's sexual innuendos and horny remarks. They had not been on the same MMA team for four years for nothing. Reiner could have been the star of the team if not for his skipping practice to go have sex with Bertl all the time. "Besides, Marco's not even gay."

Christa pondered this. "And you know that for fact?"

Jean shook his head. "Well, he's never shown any inclination or otherwise."

  "That's hetero-normativity in action again," Christa said dryly. "You shouldn't do that. It's actually offensive for some people."

  "Yeah, but I can't just assume Marco  _isn't_ straight  _or_ gay," Jean said, feeling increasingly frustrated. "I think the more important thing is that he doesn't even love  _himself_ , which begs the question of him being able to love anyone else."

  "I think the more important thing is that we don't even know if this Marco kid exists," Connie pointed out. "Jean keeps talking about him, but we've never actually met him. And here I thought we were your friends, Kirschstein."

Jean scowled. There was something almost sacrilegious about introducing Marco to his friends, like he'd been entertaining the belief that Marco was exclusively his.

  "I'm throwing a party at my place on Saturday night," Ymir said, and she pointed at Jean. "No excuses, since it's not a school night and I know damned well you don't have any assignments due anytime soon. Bring Marco, even if you have to kidnap him to go."

Everyone voiced their agreement, drowning out Jean's protests.

 

The walk back to the dormitory was too short for comfort; Jean wanted more time to decide how to invite Marco to the party. It had taken hours of persuasion and convincing (and threatening) just to get Marco to spend Friday evenings with him.

Sure enough, Marco immediately refused to go.

  "No way," Marco shook his head, all too aware of his double chin and fold of his stomach as he reclined on his bed with his sketchbook. He didn't want to expose himself to people who might regard him for what he was: fat, obese, a loser, a nobody. Jean had defied all his expectations, and treated him, unbelievably, as someone more and better than that. He didn't want to risk other people's opinions influencing Jean's attitude towards him.

Jean sat on the edge of Marco's bed and fought down the feeling of hurt when Marco inched away from him. What, did he think he was some kind of monster?

  "Come on, it'll be fun," Jean wheedled softly.  _How did_ maman  _convince Evangeline not to sign up for MMA? Please tell me I inherited some of her persuasive powers._

  "No," Marco said stubbornly, feeling panic rise in his chest. It was a feeling he was used to, now that he shared close quarters with Jean. Living in perpetual fear that Jean would be repulsed by his bodily appearance, so taking care not to change in front of him (while Jean could care less, stripping nude while Marco secretly drooled over the whipcord muscles that laced around Jean's body); that Jean would find out about his feelings for him, so making sure that Jean was never alone in the room lest he find the dozens of sketchbooks filled with sketches of Jean and the hoodie he'd stolen; that Jean would tire of him or find him annoying, so making sure he never bothered Jean with complaints or needless conversation.

  "Marco," Jean sighed. "Why not? Don't you  _want_ to make new friends?"

Marco frantically searched in his mental Rolodex for some friends he had, and came up depressingly short. "I have you."

Jean would never forget the way he felt his heart  _jump_ with delight when Marco said that, like he was all he had in the world confined to their dormitory room. His gaze and tone softened and warmed.

  "Yes,  _mon chéri_ ," the French endearment slipped from his lips before he knew what he was saying. "But I'm afraid that isn't enough."

Marco was so panicked about the possibility that Jean might take his reply the wrong way that he completely didn't hear the French endearment. "I really don't want to go."

The mild surprise at his own slip was engulfed in frustration and Jean's brows, already drawn together in a perpetual half-scowl, knitted together. "Marco Bodt, you are going with me to Ymir's party. You will make friends, you will maybe get drunk, and you will possibly get entangled in some stupid shenanigan, but I swear, you will have fun."

Marco's doe eyes, always tugging at Jean's heartstrings from the first time they made eye contact, turned sad and  _get this_ , he actually  _pouted._

Jean wavered, but he remembered Ymir's instructions/demands. If he wanted counselling from Christa, he had better not piss off the dragon at the mouth of the counselling cave.

  "Don't pull the puppy look on me," Jean said sternly.  _Though it's making feel guilty as hell, Marco, you little shit._ "We're going, even if I have to tie you up and throw you in the back of Reiner's disgusting van."

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The creative juices always come uncorked during the most inappropriate times. I have mid-semester tests next week. In three days. Or two. Nearly two.
> 
> (EDIT: THANK YOU MIZERA FOR YOUR MAD FRENCH SKILLS)


	3. Shall We Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco's first time... attending a party, that is. And it goes a helluva lot better than he expects.  
> (a lot of sappy adoration on Jean's part)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of homophobia (I STILL REALLY DK) and body negativity (insults). Please do not read if sensitive!!

Reiner's van was always a horror story in the most unexpected (and undesirable) nooks and crannies of the secondhand vehicle. On more than one occasion Jean had fished out (and fairly shrieked upon realising what it was) a used condom between the seats or under them. And Connie had whispered his own fair share of traumatic tales of terror in the locker room and it didn't take an idiot to figure out what Reiner's van was predominantly used for. So it was understandable that Jean was  _very_ reluctant to hitch rides with Reiner.

Unfortunately, Marco was being... well, Marco. Jean had resorted to force and it wasn't pretty.

  "Jean," Marco whimpered, struggling weakly against Jean's grip on his wrists. "Please don't make me--"

  "I have to," Jean said grimly. "Otherwise you'll be a hermit for the rest of your life."

  "I'm perfectly okay wi--"

  "Nope, not listening," Jean shoved Marco none-too-gently into the van, and prayed to whatever higher power that Reiner had the good darn sense to clean up after himself  _just this once_ as he climbed in after Marco.

The first thing that hit him was the overwhelming scent of deodorant, one Jean quickly registered as Bertl's. The poor giant was in the midst of experimenting with all types of antiperspirants to combat his overly-active sweat glands that seemed to kick into overdrive at the slightest provocation. Which meant the two probably had sex in that very vehicle no more than an hour ago, and the scent was an effort to hide it.

Jean glanced over at Marco as Reiner changed gears, but the doe-eyed sweetheart was too terrified to be discomfited by the inordinate use of scent. As they made their way towards Ymir's apartment block, Jean just watched Marco out of the corner of his eye, thinking of all the reasons why he liked him and was making so much effort to "help" him (Jean did  _not_ want to introduce himto his friends; he would rather spend the evening with him in their room, maybe watching a movie or just talking like they usually did with the ease of best friends).

Marco was shy, there was no doubt about it. It had taken him a week just to make eye contact with Jean without turning red or stuttering, and nearly a month before Marco was willing to squeeze onto Jean's bed just to watch a flick with him.

Even now, Marco flinched away from any form of skin contact with Jean. He was ashamed of his body, and Jean was intent on fixing that.

He had no idea how someone so loveable could be so devoid of love for himself. After all the times when Jean had dragged himself back to the dorm room, exhausted and filthy, and Marco had been so patient and tolerant. He'd made Jean strip and take a bath, bathing his bruised and cut-up knuckles in ice while Jean soaked in the tub-slash-shower. Then that one time when Jean had fallen sick with the flu, and Marco had made a jar of lemon-ginger-honey jelly to make into the most soothing nectar ever just for Jean's sore throat. 

But most of all, Jean found it impossible not to adore Marco's cute button nose (which Marco mentioned he found unflattering to his round face), his just-a-shade-darker freckles that were sprinkled across his baby face, his supple body that just demanded to be hugged (not that Jean had gotten the opportunity or permission to do so), his silky soft hair and... oh, Jean could just go on. Sometimes he caught himself doing just that, and felt stupid and idiotic for daydreaming about someone who probably didn't even register him beyond the scale of "friends".

He was honoured, of course, to be regarded as Marco's first and only best friend. Despite that, he wanted more.

He wanted to hug Marco, to comfort, to sleep. He wanted to be able to hold his hand and stroke the smooth, vein-free hand with its dimples and kiss it. He wanted to kiss his lips, which were perfectly shaped and looked ever so soft to the touch, never chapped or split like his own. He wanted to run his fingers through Marco's hair, and bury his face in it, or the cushioned nook where his neck and shoulder joined.

He wanted so much. Worst of all, he found himself wanting too much. Marco's face, twisted in desire and lust and panting for more as Jean touched the most private parts of his--

  "We're here," Reiner called out, switching off the ignition.

Marco's eyes were squeezed shut, and his hands were folded in his lap. Jean reached across the seats and nearly grabbed Marco's hand before changing his mind and touching his shoulder instead.

  "C'mon," Jean said gently. "Nobody's gonna make fun of you. I swear."

  "And we'll beat them to a bloody pulp if they try," Reiner seconded from the front seat.

Marco gave them both a weak smile before climbing out of the van with Jean. Reiner took Bertholdt's hand, and Marco's eyes widened.

  "Oh," Reiner noticed Marco's expression. "You didn't tell him?"

Before Jean could open his mouth, the whole gang spilled out of the doorway like some aggressive welcome committee.

  "You must be Marco," Christa said warmly, and Jean was glad she was the first to open her mouth. "Welcome to bedlam."

  "Jean's told us  _all about you_ ," Connie's grin was so wide Jean hoped it would actually split his stupid face in two so he'd never be so big-mouthed again.

  "Eat fast, or don't eat at all," was Sasha's input.

Marco was looking increasingly overwhelmed and Jean recognised the all-too-familiar look of growing panic in his deer-in-the-headlights expression. He took Marco's hand without thinking, and gave him a reassuring smile. He jerked with surprise when Jean took his hand, but calmed down when he saw Jean's smile.

  "You've met Reiner and Bertholdt, I take it," Ymir drawled, her arm slung possessively around Christa's small shoulders. She noticed the look of startled surprise on Marco's face when he saw the gesture, and made an expression in what could only be described as an unfriendly smirk. "Everyone here is either really gay, or really okay with it."

  "Ah, no, I'm n-not against it or anything," Marco stuttered, turning beet red.

Jean held his hand tighter. "Ymir, don't make him any more uncomfortable than he already is."

  "Then I assume you were brought here by force," Ymir's laughter was harsh.

  "Sorry," Marco mumbled. "I told Jean not to bring me but--"

  "That's Ymir's way of welcoming you," Christa said gently. "Don't take her too seriously."

  "Nobody does," Reiner grinned. "That's how we put up with her."

He blocked Ymir's left jab with ease, like they did it all the time. Ymir, Reiner, Connie and Jean were all on the MMA varsity team. But Jean was the only regular turn-up at trainings because he was the only single one, something every one there planned on changing.

* * *

 

Marco had nothing to fear from Jean's friends: they were so accepting, so kind (Ymir was a different story, but she was still kind in her own way, he supposed) and so genuinely friendly that Marco was sorry he had not made an effort to meet them sooner.

There was Reiner and Bertholdt, the first gay couple Marco ever met. Reiner was shorter than he was, yet all brawn and loud laughter. He was nice, with a crude sense of humour and was undoubtedly devoted to his boyfriend, even they did make Marco uncomfortable with their excessive PDA. Bertholdt was shy, taller than Marco and quiet. He barely spoke, and always blushed at Reiner's affections. He sweat an awful lot.

There was Connie and Sasha, whose relationship went way back to middle school. Connie was somewhat slower on the uptake than his friends, but he was unexpectedly sharp about certain issues and always made sure Marco was included in the conversation. His hair had been cropped so close to his scalp, he might as well have been bald. Jean told him that Connie had had a military upbringing, even if it didn't show in his behaviour. He could hold his own against Reiner's brute strength in the fighting ring. Sasha was really pretty, with long brown hair she kept tied back in a ponytail. She had a voracious appetite that didn't match her lanky appearance, something Marco envied.

There was Ymir and Christa, the most confusing match Marco ever came across. Christa was all petite, blond hair, angelic blue eyes and sweet demeanour, whereas Ymir by contrast was all angles, sharp features and sharper tongue, and fairly towered over her girlfriend. But they were both very obviously in love with each other, and that was another thing Marco envied. 

When Jean had taken his hand to comfort him, Marco couldn't help a shudder of delight, but it was quickly extinguished by fear. His hand was doughy, fleshy and nothing like Jean's calloused, fighter's hands or a girl's soft, slim ones. But Jean's grip meant no shaking it off. He kept on holding it long after Ymir invited them inside.

  "Usual rules apply," Ymir called over her shoulder as she led the way in.

  "That means Reiner and Bertholdt can't engage in PDA inside the house," Jean informed Marco in quiet aside. "Sasha isn't allowed into the kitchen until everyone's chewing something, and no one gets close to Christa when they've had more than two beers."

  "You're not telling him the most important one," Connie piped up. "Jean isn't allowed to so much as talk to Eren."

  "He'd better not be here," Jean growled.

  "Oh, but he is," Connie laughed. "He's in the living room with Mikasa and Armin."

Marco felt Jean stiffen at the mention of Mikasa, and felt that same tug at his heart he was now accustomed to where Jean was concerned.

  "Great," Jean muttered. "Just great."

  "Be nice," Sasha warned in a rare moment of peacemaking.

  "Yeah, when you stop stealing Pop-tarts from Christa's pantry," Jean snorted.

The music wasn't as loud as Marco had expected, nor was it any hard rock or jarring tune. It was tuned low so people could still hold conversations without shouting, and it had a steady four-time beat that made it seem like the party had a regular pulse. People weren't lying around in drunken heaps, or stoned or anything Marco had imagined. There was alcohol out, sure, but people were taking it in moderation with snacks and soda water.

  "Not what you were expecting, I take it?" Jean grinned as he watched Marco take it in.

Marco opened his mouth to reply, but he was cut off by a painfully familiar voice.

  "Who invited the Freckled Fatso?" Sam Linley shouted, waving a beer bottle at him from the couch.

Sam had been one of Marco's chief tormentors in high school, actually making an effort to hunt him down in the corridors just to get in a jab at Marco with a stinging remark about his freckles or his fat, frequently combining both into one insult.

Marco ducked his head, the long-lost feeling of humiliation climbing his neck in a crimson flush of embarrassment. He wished the ground would just open up and swallow him whole. Why was Sam here? Picking now of all times, here of all places, in front of Jean of all people? He wished he'd never come, wished he'd made more of an effort to resist Jean--

  "Shut the fuck up and get your fucking ass out of my house," Ymir snapped. She silenced everyone else, and the music made the situation even more tense. "Did you hear me, Linley? You're not welcome here if you're going to be a fucking dickshit, especially to my friends."

  "Whatever," Sam mumbled when he recovered from the shock at being called out on. "Lame-ass party anyway."

He slinked off, aiming a dirty look at Marco that was intercepted by Jean, who shot him a glare that had him averting his gaze.

Marco was stunned. It was the first time in his life anyone had stood up to defend him like that. He tried to thank Ymir, but she just waved him away, pulling Christa with her into the kitchen and leaving him in the corridor with Jean.

  "You okay?" Jean asked cautiously, watching Marco with worry in his pale amber eyes. Marco's heart twisted for this good-looking, amazing, perfect man that he could never claim like Bertholdt claimed Reiner, or Sasha claimed Connie, or Christa claimed Ymir.

  "I'm fine," Marco gave him a weak smile. "Thanks, Jean."

Jean's smile was not unlike the summer sun to Marco: bright, wide and warm. "Don't thank me just yet."

 


	4. More Than A Little

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean meets a side of Marco that has never been seen before... and he likes it.

Marco had one beer, then two, and then the lights were really bright and pretty and he told Jean so.

  "Okay, I think you've had enough there," Jean tried to ease the third unopened Budweiser out of Marco's hand, but the latter was adamant. He felt pleasantly buzzed and light-headed, with no nerves or panic attacks a cold ball of fear in his gut.

  "Don't be a party-pooper, Jean," Marco giggled, keeping the bottle out of Jean's reach. They were sitting together on the couch in Ymir's living room, and Jean had his feet up on the coffee table even though Ymir had told him about half a dozen times to quit it.

  "Never would have guessed you were such a lightweight," Jean muttered, and he sounded like his mouth was right next to Marco's ear. Only then did Marco register Jean's arm on the back of the couch behind him, half an inch from the back of his neck. It made the skin there tingle and he leaned back against Jean's muscular arm, making the sober one glance at him in surprise. It was, after all, the first time Marco had ever voluntarily made casual physical contact with Jean.

  "I'm no lightweight," Marco gave Jean a dopey smile. "I'm a heavyweight. Have you seen my weight records?"

  "We're not going there," Jean warned, but Marco was too drunk to care.

  "173 pounds," Marco declared, almost proudly. "And counting."

Jean met the raised eyebrows of his friends, and shrugged. Marco carried on ranting about why he was "so fat", and attributed most of it to his mother's "fucking amazing cooking" and his lack of motivation to exercise because he could "literally feel the fats jiggling when he moved".

Then Marco paused, and Jean looked at him to find the darker-haired male staring at him in what could only be described as adoration. Jean felt his pulse kick up a couple of notches, and a warm sensation curling in his lower half. 

 _"_ You're so handsome," Marco marvelled, his face flushed with the effect of more alcohol than he could handle. "I thought that when I first saw you in freshman year."

  "Wait, what?"

  "I thought Evangeline was your cat or something," Marco continued, ignoring Jean's shock. "And I always wished I could talk to you but you were so popular and I'm such a loser and--"

  "Marco, hold up--"

  "Your ass is amazing," Marco chuckled, and it careened into a full-blown peal of hysterical laughter. "I thought I could bounce a quarter off it."

Jean blushed as everyone within hearing range gave him an arched eyebrow or an equally questioning smirk. "Marco, maybe we should take this somewhere else--"

  "I don't hate it when you touch me," Marco's voice dropped to a strange whisper, and the alcohol-induced look of giddy delight was gone from his face. In its place was shame. "But I know you do. I mean, I'm so gross and flabby and I can't even stand to look at myself in the mirror so I don't know how--"

  "Enough!" Jean's voice cracked like a whip, and Marco's gaze jerked up to meet his furious, pale amber one.

Then the giddy delight returned, and Marco grinned, disoriented. "You have pretty eyes."

And that was when Jean decided it was time to take Marco back to their dormitory, before Connie and Reiner and everyone else busted their sides laughing.

* * *

 

Sundays were always family call days for Jean.

The sound of the Skype ringtone grated at his ears, and he groped blindly for his laptop from under his duvet. His fingers brushed at the cool metal, grabbed at it, and he woke up from an adrenaline rush of a near heart-attack when he had to pull a ninja move before it crashed against the floor.

The screen was too bright in the darkness of the dormitory room, even though it was almost twelve noon but the curtains had been drawn. Jean winced as he opened up the Skype application and clicked "Accept Video Call".

  "Jean? _Pourquoi est-ce si sombre_? "his mother's voice was ordinarily melodic and sounded like a tune of birds twittering, but to Jean right now it sounded like nails on a chalkboard. He struggled not to swear.

  " _J’ai un peu trop bu d’alcool la nuit dernière,_ " Jean mumbled, running a hand through his bedhead.

His mother tutted and shook her head, dark locks swaying. " _Scandaleux_."

  " _Ce n’est pas comme si vous n’avez jamais eu une gueule de bois_ ," Jean managed to dredge up a grin. "No,  _maman_?"

She turned a pretty shade of pink. " _Jamais à ce point!_ "

  "I wanna talk to him!" came an annoyingly familiar and chipper voice. Jean groaned, partly because he was expected to.

  " _Je suis en train de parler à ton frère, ma chérie,_ " his mother scolded. " _Sois patiente."_

 _"_ Is he still ugly?"

Jean rolled his eyes. "Let her talk,  _maman_ , or I'll never hear the end of it."

  " _Grand frère_!" Evangline's face, so much like their mother's with her mahogany hair and doll-like features, filled the screen. She had just turned sixteen, and he had no doubt she was on her way to breaking as many hearts as their mother had. The only difference would be that she would be breaking just as many noses. "Yes, you are still ugly. Good."

  "Don't you have tuition or something to go for?" Jean still smiled anyway. He missed his little sister but like hell he would ever let her know.

  "I do, actually," she conceded. "In about...  _maman_ ,  _quelle heure est-il?_ " _  
_

"It's a little past twelve," Jean told her.

  "Then I have enough time to take a few more jabs at my big brother," she smiled sunnily.

  " _Du_ _kleine Göre_ ," he chuckled.

  " _Ich lerne von den Besten_ ," she retorted.

A loud, uncomfortable whimper from the other side of the room caught his attention, and his little sister's.

  "What was that?" her eyes went wide. 

  "Just my roommate," he reassured her. He could still frighten her with tales of monsters in her closet, and even now he was fairly certain she couldn't sleep if there was any strange rustling noises in her room at night.

  "Is he cute?" she asked eagerly.

  "I don't remember you being this desperate," Jean teased.

  "I'm not," she huffed, affronted by the very idea. "I just want to know."

  "He is cute," Jean nodded, then smiled as he remembered last night. " _Very_ cute."

The groaning noises started up again, and Jean bid a hasty farewell to his little sister, promising his mother that he would definitely call her later.

  "Hey, hey," Jean climbed out of bed, wincing at the slight headache. He crouched by Marco-- or well, the heap that was Marco under the duvet.

  "Eurgh... John...?"

Jean's nose wrinkled at the mispronunciation. He hated it when people did that, and Marco had been the first person he'd ever met who didn't mispronounce it upon their first meeting. But after last night, a few things were starting to piece together, and Jean seriously doubted it was the first time they had ever actually met as Jean had previously assumed.

  "How are you feeling,  _Bärchen_?" Jean whispered, knowing full well the impact of a loud voice on someone with a hangover.

  "Ugh... like..." Marco's voice sounded like someone had put his throat through sandpaper. "Mmff... like crap."

  "Eloquent," Jean chuckled, recalling his first hangover. He had woken up swearing and cussing like a French sailor. "You think you can handle getting up and eating some breakfast?"

  "Maybe," Marco croaked, and the heap shifted as Marco tried to get upright.

Then he froze and he was very,  _very_ awake.

  "I was not wearing this last night," Marco said slowly, and his head emerged from the duvet to meet Jean's gaze. "Did you... did you help me change clothes?"

  "Yes," Jean said carefully. "You puked all over your jeans. I couldn't--"

  "Oh, no," Marco half-wailed, and his head disappeared under the duvet again. "Why did you have to do that?"

  "Marco--"

  "Don't touch me," Marco whimpered. "Just... just leave me alone."

And then Jean understood: he was ashamed. He didn't want Jean touching or looking at his bare body because he was afraid Jean would find his body repulsive.

  "Marco, I didn't see anything," Jean said gently. "I swear. It was too dark, and I was halfway drunk anyway."

That was a lie. He had spent at least half an hour connecting the freckles on Marco's ribs in quiet fascination and stroked the soft belly, only just barely resisting the urge to hug him and go to sleep like that.

  "Really?" Marco peered out at him through a crack in the duvet. He was outrageously cute, and Jean had to squash the desire to cuddle him. "You promise?"

  "I promise," Jean lied. "Now come on. I'm a pro at treating hangovers and you're going to need all the help you can get."

  "Did I... did I do anything last night?" Marco whispered.

And Jean's heart plummeted. So he didn't remember. He didn't remember being honest, and uninhibited. He didn't remember all the endearments he had called Jean, one or two of which in Italian. He didn't remember Jean's lips lightly brushing his before he tucked him in.

  "No," Jean lied again. "Nothing at all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PARDON MY FRENCH AND GERMAN I HAVE NEVER TAKEN LESSONS AND AM RELYING ON GOOGLE TRANSLATE. Drop me a message if I screwed up and I will edit immediately!
> 
> I don't know how to progress from here... do you all want me to dive straight into the shenanigans of building a r/s or have them struggle a bit more? Drop me a cue in my inbox or in my tumblr http://ishipitsobad.tumblr.com
> 
> EDIT: once again I OWE THE FRENCH TO THE AMAZING AND TIRELESS MIZERA


	5. Bumping It Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean nurses Marco through a hangover, does something stupid, and seeks counselling for it.
> 
> And Marco has a few dirty thoughts.

  "How's the hangover, Marco?" Jean perched on the edge of his bed, looking unfairly attractive for someone who had drunk more than Marco had last night. He had taken a shower after Marco and changed into a fraying pair of cotton shorts and a T-shirt promoting the first tour of Mayday Parade.

  "Better," Marco mumbled into the edge of his duvet; the headache had been reduced to a dull throbbing ache in his skull thanks to the aspirin and water Jean had forced on him.  "Aren't you going out?"

The amber-eyed male usually spent Sunday afternoons at the gym, putting in extra training hours under his coach's supervision.

  "Nah," Jean gave him a smile and patted his hand under the duvet. It made Marco's skin tingle and he hid a blush. "I'll stay with you until you're better."

  "I feel better already," Marco protested, feeling guilty about holding Jean back. "Just go. Don't you have some match to train for?"

  " _Pas du tout_ ," Jean laughed. "If anything, I have a call to make."

Oh, right. Jean's family made him keep in contact with a call on every Sunday. Marco's own parents just told him to call whenever. It wasn't that they didn't care, more like they just felt Marco was at the age where he had to learn independence.

  "Right," Marco murmured. "Then go. I'll be fine. I'm going to sleep."

  "That's good," Jean patted his hand again. "Get some rest. Call me if you need anything."

  "I'm right across the room," Marco reminded him.

  "Which is good, isn't it?" Jean winked.

Marco stared after him as he walked away to grab his laptop, mouth agape. What was that wink for? But it hurt too much to think, and as Jean opened up his laptop to call his family, he found himself drifting off to sleep.

 

He woke up to the noise of someone rambling in a language he didn't understand. It took him a while to register in his fuzzy head, but it was German.

  "... _Das Geld liegt nicht auf der Straße, Jean,"_ the voice was mature, old and very severe. Marco guessed it was Jean's dad.

  " _Ja, Vater_ ," Jean was rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand, something he did only when he was frustrated. " _Ich bin mir bewusst_."

He was sitting cross-legged on his bed with his laptop balanced on his feet, looking down into the screen. His hair was rumpled and the clock on the wall told Marco it was already ten minutes past four in the afternoon. He'd slept for two hours, and that was exactly how long Jean had been on call with his family.

  "Jean?" Marco sounded like a bullfrog and he internally smacked his own forehead.  _Way to make yourself even more repulsive, Marco._

"Oh, hey," Jean glanced over at him and held up a finger. "Just hold on for a second, okay?"

  " _K_ _ümmern sich um Ihr Freund_ ," his father admonished. He switched to a heavily-accented English. "And do not let me hear about such nonsense from your mother again, _v_ _erstehen Sie?_ "

  " _Jawohl, Vater_ ," Jean sighed, and he ended the call with a click.

He put the laptop carefully on his desk, conveniently situated next to his bed, and swung his muscular legs (those cotton shorts revealed so much and Marco appreciated every inch of the view) over the side of it to stride across the room.

  "How're you feeling, champ?" he nearly reached out a hand to rest it on Marco's cheek, but quickly retracted it before Marco noticed.

  "Better, I guess?" Marco rasped. "You looked like you needed rescuing."

  "Hell yeah I did," Jean barked a laugh that sounded highly unamused. "My dad was going off on one of his lectures again. My mom told him about me taking us drinking last night, and getting you drunk and everything, and he got pissed off."

  "You didn't force me to go..." Marco trailed off and winced as he remembered Jean  _had_ essentially forced him to go. "Well, you're not the one who shoved two bottles of beer down my throat."

  "At least now we know you're no drinker," Jean smiled. "When was the last time you had an alcoholic beverage?"

  "I had some amaretto liquer at my cousin's wedding once," Marco said sheepishly.

  "Was it your drink?"

  "No, my mom's."

  "And you were how old...?"

  "...ten?"

Jean burst out laughing, and Marco watched as his eyes  _did the thing_.

They crinkled up at the corners, and Jean's amber eyes darkened slightly with humour to a beautiful shade of burnished gold. Marco was a lost cause, and he knew it.

  "Alright," Jean finally stopped laughing, wiping away a tear that had escaped to run down his high, sharp cheekbones that Marco wanted to trace. "Think you can stomach some food?"

 

  "Holy shit, Jean," Marco said with his mouth full. "You can cook!"

Jean wielded the spatula, pushing around pieces of French toast (he rolled his eyes when Marco mentioned the irony) and omelettes on the stove in the kitchenette furnished by the dormitory.

  "Thanks," Jean shot him a wry smile. "My mom kind of forced me to learn how to cook. We have an au pair, but there was once when we went vacationing in my parent's countryside cabin and we didn't think to bring her along. My mom and dad kind of disappeared for three days and Evangeline wouldn't stop whining about not wanting to eat crackers anymore, so I had to learn."

  "Bless your mom," Marco mumbled over a mouthful of egg.

  "I'll be sure to pass on the message," Jean laughed, flipping toast and eggs onto a plate for himself. "Don't forget to drink water."

  "Yes, yes," Marco took an exaggeratedly loud gulp of water just to placate Jean.

They finished Jean's cooking in relative silence, and when they were done, they heaped the dishes into the dishwasher.

  "So how're you feeling now?" Jean leaned back against the granite-top island counter, all ruffled blond hair and sexy body and Marco really needed to get off his soapbox.

  "Tons better," Marco shot him a grateful look. "Sorry for making you skip--"

  "Ah," Jean held up a hand. "I don't want to hear any unwarranted apologies, just righteous gratitude. Marco, you're my friend, which means I  _like_ doing stuff like this for you."

And it wasn't just Marco who felt the twinge of hurt in his heart when Jean used the word "friend".

* * *

 

  "I'm such an idiot," Jean sighed into his hands.

  "I second that absolutely," Connie flipped a page in his textbook, eyes not lifting from the words detailing how programming worked. "But I could always use more reasons to back up that statement. Do tell."

  "I kissed Marco last night when I put him in bed," Jean muttered, and continued despite Connie's outburst of surprise at the revelation. "But then I called him my friend this morning."

  "Wow," Connie said, stunned. "You're more of an idiot than I gave you credit for. Congratulations, you've been bumped up to supreme moron."

  "Thanks a lot," Jean said sarcastically. "As my  _actual_ friend, you could stand to offer more emotional support and advice."

  "That's Christa's job," Connie waved at someone behind Jean. "Speak of the angel herself, and she will appear."

Christa slipped into the seat next to Connie. "What's up?"

  "Where's Ymir?" Jean asked, searching their surroundings. The blond angel was always fiercely guarded by the dragon, who was never far.

  "Grocery shopping," Christa shrugged off her coat. "How's Marco?"

  "He's a braindead fool," Connie supplied before Jean could open his mouth.

  " _Ta Gueule!"_ Jean snapped. _  
_

"Just tell me what happened," Christa chastised.

Jean repeated what he had told Connie, and Christa merely sighed.

  "But he doesn't remember you kissing him, right?" Christa prodded.

  "He doesn't remember anything after his second beer," Jean said glumly.

  "Well, we definitely know he likes you  _likes_ you," the petite blonde offered. "So that means at least he would be receptive to your advances, right?"

  "I don't think so," Jean ran a hand through his hair, sighing. "See, Marco hates being touched, remember? The whole schtick about him thinking I would hate his body and everything has him convinced that there's no way I would ever like him more than a friend. Plus my platonic move this morning kind of seals the deal."

  "Sorry, Jean," Christa said gently. "But there's no way around that. You have to show Marco you love him for everything, otherwise you'll both be stuck in this rut forever, and you'll regret it."

Jean weighed this, and decided Marco was in for a whole lot of loving.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek! Thanks for all the lovely comments! (though I didn't quite understand the first one, but I'll assume it was praise)
> 
> Again, my German is nonexistent, and I am relying on Google translate so please overlook my idiocy or drop me a message if I need to change it!
> 
> (Ahhhh I should really be studying)


	6. This Is Why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Jean makes an attempt to force Marco to love himself as much as he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is gonna be a short one, folks...

  "Jean...? Jean, what are you doing?" Marco's voice rose in pitch and terror. " _Jean_!"

Jean was slowly inching on him with wiggling fingers in the air. His expression was absolutely serious as he encroached on Marco's personal space. "You know, we've been rooming together for almost four months now, and you won't even let me bro-hug you."

Marco started to wheeze in panic. "Do  _what_?"

  "Just let me hug you, you idiot," Jean lunged forward and with an agility Marco wasn't aware he possessed, he dodged.

  "Why?" Marco panted, edging away from Jean.

  "Because you need one," Jean pointed out. "When was the last time you ever had a hug?"

 _That would back in never_ , Marco thought but that didn't matter right now. Why the hell did Jean want to even hug  _him_? He had a tummy that could rival the size of Russia and love handles and --

  "C'mere!" Jean shot forward, and Marco was too busy fretting to properly evade him.

Jean caught him by his hips (his non-existent hips, which were hidden under an inch thick layer of fat) and tackled him onto Jean's bed. Marco felt a quiver of preposterous excitement run through his body as Jean fell on top of him. And then stiffened in chagrin as he realised he might as well be a frickin' pillow the way Jean practically bounced on his pudgy stomach.

  "Jean--!" Marco tried to slide away, but Jean pinned his wrists to the bed and straddled his waist. Marco's palpitations of sexual tension and desire was evicted by horror when he saw how wide Jean had to spread his legs just to straddle him. "Let me go!"

  "Marco," Jean said firmly, his grip like iron. "You  _know_ we need to get this settled."

 _Get what settled?_ Marco thought anxiously.  _The freaking boner you're giving me by putting us in this position? Although I wouldn't mind_ that _..._

"I don't find your body repulsive," Jean said quietly, keeping his eyes locked on Marco's. They were hypnotic and unrelenting. "I don't even know why  _you_ do. I will  _never_ find your body repulsive, Marco. It's perfect--"

  "It's not!" Marco burst out, and the tears stung the back of his eyes and Marco struggled not to cry, but his voice broke. "I'm fat, and you don't have to pretend you like it. I've got love handles, thunder thighs, a waistline that could rival--"

  "Shut up, Marco," Jean threatened, his face coming dangerously close to Marco's. Marco just had to jerk his chin up a little, and he'd peck Jean on the lips. N-not that he was considering it. "You don't get to decide how I feel. And stop using other people's insults to describe yourself."

Then he reared back a little, and Marco found himself wishing Jean would keep on coming close like that.

  "When was the last time someone gave you a compliment?" Jean asked, eyes narrowing.

Marco was taken aback. "Um, I don't know."

  "Well, the next time someone asks you to describe yourself," Jean came close again and Marco's heart fluttered outrageously. "Use my words and not the ones of some  _salope_ like Sam Linley, okay? You're beautiful. You're so ridiculously adorable, and I just want to hug you all the time because you're so damned adorable all the time. Your freckles look like stars on your skin, and your nose is so fucking cute and I want to boop it every time I look at it. You have prettier hair than Mikasa (and that is saying a lot), and your eyes look like a doe's and when you do that fucking pout of yours, it makes me want to give in to any demand. Which is just it, because you don't make any demands. You never ask anything of me, and you give me everything. As for your body, well, it's so cuddly and so soft and you don't understand how much I just want to hug you to sleep all the time because you're like a teddy bear." _  
_

Marco's heart sped up until he felt like it could jump right out of his chest and run out the door, screaming. He was fairly sure his face was as red as Jean's beanie, and it wasn't an attractive sight.

  "And when you blush like that," Jean drawled with a shit-eating grin. "you look like a fucking strawberry and I just want to kiss you."

Marco's heart stopped altogether.  _Did he just...?_

Jean seemed startled by his own words, and the grin faded... and then a smile, a captivating, warm smile of such happiness and acceptance, just spread over the features that Marco had fallen in love with on that first day of high school.

  "Yeah," Jean murmured, and he bent down so close to Marco's face that his nose tapped against the freckled male's. "I just want to kiss you. All the damn time."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *SQUEALS AND RUNS AWAY LAUGHING MANICALLY* JUST FUCKING KISS ALREADY


	7. Because You Can't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean's made his move... and Marco reacts.

Marco couldn't breathe.

_Did Jean just...?_

 "Marco, say something," Jean murmured, his nose tapping Marco's and breath hot on his lips. His pale amber eyes were dark and hooded with a multitude of emotions, most prominently  _love._ "You're killing me here."

_Jean just said he wanted to kiss me. Jean said I was beautiful. He called me cute. He wants to kiss me. JEAN KIRSCHSTEIN wants to kiss me. If this is a dream--_

Jean, deciding that this was the only way to get a response from the unmoving boy underneath him, angled his head and brushed his lips against Marco's. It was everything the two boys had dreamed of, Marco for years, Jean for weeks. The sensation sent bubbles fizzling like soda pop in their blood, and had fireworks exploding in their heads.

The chaste contact wasn't enough for Jean, who had spent hours staring at Marco's lips wondering what it would be like to kiss them, and he kissed harder. His lips moulded to Marco's like they were cut from the same stone, fitting perfectly against the freckled youth's and sucking lightly on his lower lip. When he still didn't respond, Jean forced his mouth to part slightly by slipping in his tongue and tangling it with Marco's.

 _Then_ Marco reacted.

He pushed Jean off, and the blond haired male tumbled to the ground. "What the fuck, Marco--"

  "This isn't real," Marco panted, face turning such a bright red, Jean was worried in the back of his mind that he was going to spontaneously combust. "You don't like me."

  "You're right," Jean mused. Marco was caught between relief and disappointment. "I love you. There is a big difference."

  "Jean," Marco's heart started up again like a motorboat engine. "You don't. You just  _think_ you do. There's no way someone like you could--"

  "Want to kiss you, hug you, love you and have sex with you all over the campus?" Jean arched a pencil-thin eyebrow. His piercing glinted like the expression in his eyes.

  "Jean!"

  "Well, I do," Jean shrugged. "And you can't tell me how I feel."

  "You're  _misunderstanding_ your own feelings," Marco was desperate now, and he wasn't even sure for what. "You can't possibly be in love with someone as ridiculous as me. I'm-I'm a loser. I have no friends, no figure to speak of, no purpose in life--"

Jean had stood up in the midst of this rant, and cupped Marco's face in his hands. The latter froze again.

  "You have friends, just that you won't let them in," Jean whispered, not letting the freckled male look away. "You have a figure, and it's fucking adorable and beautiful. And if you insist you have no purpose in life, then let me give you one: to be loved by me."

  "You don't love me," Marco's voice was barely loud enough to hear, even though they were practically face to face. "Jean, you can't love me."

  "Why not? Because you think you're ugly just because you're a little chubbier than everyone else? Because you think I'm some kind of entity who is out of your league? Which, by the way, is flattering and fucking stupid."

  "Because you can't!" Marco burst into tears. "You're straight--"

  "I think I'm bisexual, and assuming I'm straight is hetero-normativity. Christa can give you a whole damn lecture on that--"

  "You're in love with Mikasa--"

  "Dude, that was for four hours, in freshman year, until she turned out to have an Eren-complex."

  "But there was that time when you had your arm around her in the parking lot--"

  "Eren made me twist my ankle during training, and I broke his nose for it. She was helping the two of us to my car so she could drive us to the hospital."

  "You could have anyone--"

  "And I want you," Jean rest his forehead against Marco's. "Now are you going to shut up and let me kiss you again, or are you going to keep talking shit?"

  "Jean," Marco sobbed, tears running down his freckled cheeks and snot threatening to do the same into his mouth. "You can't love me. You think you do, but you don't."

  "Will you stop telling me how I feel?" Jean couldn't stop himself from snarling. The anger in his voice made Marco stop crying and stare at him, wide-eyed. "Look, I love you, and if you're not going to believe what I say, then I'm just going to have to show you that I really,  _really_ love you."

* * *

 

  "Hey, Marco, right?"

Marco looked up, startled that someone was actually starting a conversation with him. A short, skinny (Marco gave an internal wistful sigh) guy with shaggy blond hair and the bright blue eyes of a china doll was standing over him.

  "Uh, yeah," Marco summoned up a smile. "And you are...?"

  "Armin," the blond kid sat down beside him on the weathered bench. "Armin Arlert. You see that guy with big green eyes and the perpetual scowl?"

He pointed at a male with dark hair and leaf-green eyes and brows drawn together in a furious expression at the edge the fighting ring. He was lanky, like Jean, but shorter. He was tying the bandages-thing around his hands to protect his knuckles and looked like he was gearing up for a fight.

  "Yeah?"

  "That's Eren Jaeger. My boyfriend."

Marco choked. "Wait, you mean--"

  "Eren and I are gay."

  "Then Mikasa--"

Armin's eyebrows disappeared into his untrimmed fringe. "Mikasa? She's Eren's adoptive sister. There's no way the two of them would be a thing. Besides, Mikasa is more like Eren's babysitter."

  "Oh, man," Marco leaned back against the wall of the boxing gym. "I thought Jean and Eren were in a love triangle with Mikasa."

Armin burst out laughing. The green-eyed kid, Eren, looked over and arched an eyebrow.

  "No way," Armin spluttered. "Eren is definitely gay for me. Almost everyone on the MMA team in this university is gay, don't you know?"

Marco scanned the people in the boxing gym: Reiner (in a relationship with Bertholdt, Marco blushed as he remembered the two of them getting hot and heavy in the living room of Ymir's apartment), Ymir (girlfriend of Christa, the sweet little blond girl), Eren (boyfriend of Armin, as the latter had told him).

  "Even the coaches are gay for each other," Armin added helpfully.

  "What?" Marco's eyes darted to the unlikely couple standing just outside the ring where Jean was sparring with Ymir. A much taller, statuesque blond with a square jawline and severe blue eyes was discussing something with an infinitely shorter male with black hair in an undercut and scary, narrow gray eyes.

  "Yeah, Coach Erwin and Levi have been gay for each other for as long as I can remember," Armin chuckled. "Eren told me that they have sex  _everywhere_. In their office, in the locker room, in their car... I think they're kind of sweet. In a perverted way."

Marco didn't say anything; he wasn't sure  _what_ to say about that. His eyes wandered back to Jean, who narrowly avoided an uppercut. He had stripped off his shirt (he'd sweat all the way through it) and was dancing on the balls of his feet around the ring in just his training shorts, knuckles all wrapped up to the middle of his forearm, eyes keen and stance defensive. The way his body moved, the muscles just stretching taut over his bones and back... Marco was surprised he wasn't drooling. Then he remembered what had happened that morning, and his expression was somewhere between a blanch and a blush.

Armin watched Marco watching Jean. "Are you and Jean...?"

  "What? No!" Marco was flustered by the innocuous question.

The blonde just gave him a sideways look, then resumed silence.

 

  "Sorry if you got bored," Jean had showered down quickly and changed into a ratty gray sweatshirt and a baggy pair of jeans with holes in the knees and were fraying at the hem. The two of them were walking across the campus to the café.

  "No, it's fine!" Marco said quickly, and then ducked his head shyly as he remembered the reason why he was even there.

 _"You're going to spend the whole day with me," Jean had said, unwavering determinedness in his set jaw. "You're coming in to sit in on my trainings, then I'm taking you out for lunch, and we're going to the cinema, and then we're going to go around town before having dinner together, and I'm going to show you every step of the way just how much I mean it when I say I love you._ "

His face had turned a magnificent shade of scarlet, and Jean kissed his cheek.

  "Wh-what?" Marco clapped a hand to his cheek, turning even redder.

  "Told you that you looked like a fucking strawberry," Jean teased. "Give me your hand."

  "W-why?"

Jean ignored his protests and grabbed the chubbier man's hand. Marco's hand was an exact opposite to Jean's slim, callused one: soft, pudgy and like the hand of an oversized baby.

Jean squeezed it.

  "People will see--"

  "Then let them see."

Marco hunched his shoulders forward, trying to look smaller than he actually was, and Jean gave his hand another squeeze. "Are you ashamed to be seen with me, Marco?"

  "What? N-no!" Marco was shocked by the very idea. "I-I just don't think you'd want to be seen with someone like me."

  "Why not?" Jean's tone was conversational, but Marco could sense the hint of impatience at the edges of his words.

  "Because you can't," Marco murmured. "You can't be seen with me. Someone as amazing as you--"

Jean pulled him up short and grabbed his face in his hands. They were so very warm, and Marco could feel the calluses on the palms. They were big enough to frame most of his round face.

And he kissed him.

Right there in the middle of the campus grounds, in front of anyone and everyone who might be walking by or looking out the classroom windows. It wasn't gentle like their first kiss that morning; it was rough, passionate and fuelled by impatience. Marco felt his knees tremble on the verge of buckling altogether as Jean forced his mouth open and slipped him his tongue again, dipping it down towards his throat.

  "--deserves someone as amazing as you," Jean finished when he let Marco go, his lips rosy and slippery with saliva from the kiss. He grabbed Marco's hand and tugged him along. "Never tell me who I can and who I can't date,  _mon amour,_ only that you love me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have tests in five hours... I might not post another chapter for a while, so please be patient! Do drop me a comment, or a note or whatever in my tumblr ask! (ishipitsobad.tumblr.com)


	8. Not A Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean takes Marco out on a date... and to cloud nine. Or is this just a dream?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOTS OF SMOOCHIE SMOOCHIE FLUFFY FLUFF *runs away screaming into the night stark naked*

  "...and a double espresso," Jean put down the laminated menu, sticky from years of being on display at the diner. He turned to look at Marco. "And you, _mon cœur_?"

  "Uh... I'll have Soup of the Day. And water."

Jean rolled his tawny ochre eyes. "He means he'll have the same as me. Double cheeseburger, the works and chilli-cheese fries. But he can have the water."

The waitress giggled, a girl who couldn't be any older than sixteen, probably working at Fred's Diner part-time to pay of her cellphone bill. It didn't escape Marco's notice that she thought Jean was really hot, judging by the way she didn't even spare Marco a glance (not that he warranted one) and had not taken her eyes off Jean's face (or more specifically, his mouth). "Coming right up."

Marco looked down at his hands, which were folded between his thighs. The moment he had sat down, they had gone from the size of two USA's to two Chinas. It wasn't helping his self-confidence any more than the waitress trying to flirt with Jean was.

Jean nudged Marco's foot with the toe of his sneakers. "Penny for your thoughts?"

  "And they're worth only so much?" Marco couldn't help replying.

Jean laughed. "I'd give you a striptease just to know."

Marco's cheeks flamed, and Jean grinned. "We meet again, Strawberry. You know, if there wasn't this table (I am 109% sure that that is someone's gum on the corner of your side of the table) between us, I'd be kissing you stupid."

There was no way to reply to that, and Marco ducked his head shyly.

  "Let's talk about something less  _scandaleux_ ," Jean winked. "How's your assignments for Professor Johanna's class coming along? Last I checked, you looked like you were going to cry trying to complete it. Or die trying."

  "Nothing so dramatic," Marco was aghast at the extreme description of his plight. "It's hard, but then again people did say that Professor Johanna was nice but a real meanie when it comes to-- what?"

Jean was struggling not to howl with laughter, and not doing very well. "S-sorry-- _pfft_ \--but-- _HAHAHAHAHA_ \--oh man--this is the first time I've ever heard someone my age actually use the word 'meanie'--" he snorted.

  "Rude," Marco huffed.

  "Hey, now," Jean was grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat, and he reached across the table to boop Marco's button nose. "Don't pout. You know what that pout of yours does to me."

  "Will it shut you up?" Marco couldn't help cracking a smile.

  "I shut up, didn't I?" Jean leaned on his elbow, his grin turning into a gentle curve of his lips as his finger moved down from Marco's nose to trace the shape of Marco's smile.

  "Jean..." Marco didn't want to jerk away from Jean's finger tracing his bottom lip. The feeling of his finger on his skin was like a supernova.

  " _Je t'aime, mon mignon_ ," Jean said huskily, and the tone of his words made Marco shiver in delight. " _Laisse-moi te montrer_."

Marco thought he was going to drown in Jean's pale honey-colored irises, until the sound of approaching footsteps towards their booth in the corner of the diner had him jerking backwards.

  "Um..." the waitress' eyes darted between Jean and Marco, and they dulled in disappointment when she came to the realisation that Jean was gay. "Here. Your burgers. And coffee. Sorry for the wait."

She almost carelessly set down the tray and put out the burgers and cups, avoiding eye contact with either one of them. Marco noticed that she had applied a new layer of bright red lipstick, and his stomach turned at her intention. He decided not to comment or think about it, instead choosing to focus on the burger in front of him. Jean had been right-- he would have wanted the cheeseburger.

  "Have at it," Jean grinned. "Fred's burgers are the best. Tried, tested and true."

Marco hesitated. He didn't want to appear like a pig in the slop trough. Until Jean tore into his burger, and Marco decided to heck with it.

He took a big first bite, and his eyes went huge when the taste of heaven's junk food saturated his tastebuds. Jean noticed his expression, and gave him a grin with his mouth full. It was a funny look, and Marco nearly choked trying not to chuckle at it. He chewed, relishing the texture, and swallowed.

  "Good, huh?" Jean shot him a look like a cat that had gotten the cream.

  "Definitely," Marco gasped. "I can't believe you've never invited me here before!"

  "There's a reason for everything," Jean gave him a sly look, and Marco understood immediately; Jean had intentionally saved this for their first date, which meant he had been planning this for as long as he'd known about the diner. And judging from how well he knew the menu, probably quite a while. Marco felt his face turn so hot he could have grilled burgers on it.

* * *

 

They wound up sharing a hot fudge sundae because Jean belatedly remembered he was supposed to be on a diet until his upcoming matches were over, and because Marco was silently ashamed for pigging out like that in front of Jean. Despite Marco's protests, the blonde adjusted his beanie and paid the bill (the waitress gave him a wistful glance when she handed him back the change). Then as they headed out, Jean grabbed Marco's hand and told the freckled male to shut the fuck up because there was no way he was going to go Dutch when it was their first date.

A nearby elderly patron choked on her fries, and Marco had to drag Jean out before he could pick a fight with an old lady in paisley.

  "No artsy films," Jean said immediately when they reached the cinema. "I might be of European descent and spent half my life there, but that doesn't mean I appreciate the crap film works."

  "Jean!" Marco huffed. "Some of them can be really good, like this--"

  "Nope."

  "But--"

  "Noping so hard."

  "Fine," Marco pouted, and Jean groaned.

  "You're doing that on purpose."

  "Is it working?"

Jean closed his eyes, opened one at Marco, shut it again. "There has to be action in it, at least."

  " _None of them have action in it_."

The red-beanie toting fighter with enough piercings to give the impression of a hoodlum made an expression you'd expect to see on a five year old who's been told he's getting a free ice-cream cone. " _Exactly_."

Marco scowled at him, but couldn't possibly stay mad at him. It still made his head spin, every time there was a gap of silence in their conversation long enough for Marco to realise that  _this was actually happening_. He had spent so long fantasising about moments like these, that he had come to disbelieve that it was reality. This was the boy he'd watched grow into a young man, a fighter at heart, but also a sweetheart. Marco's own heart twisted in longing for him, and was surprised at the delighted, relieved satisfaction he felt whenever Jean showed him any affection with a kiss or held his hand, or declared it aloud and startling passer-bys.

  "Alright," Marco relented, giving Jean an exasperated half-smile. "You pick. But absolutely no gore."

  "No gore?" Jean arched an eyebrow, the one with the piercing. Marco was always fascinated by the way it caught the light and flashed when he did that. "No fun."

  "Only weird people have preferences like that," Marco shuddered.

  "On behalf of all weird people out there," Jean slung an arm around Marco and smacked a loud kiss on his cheek, totally oblivious to the people who stared. "I would like to tell you the truth: we don't actually like the gore. We just like having our sweethearts cuddling up against us in fear while we pretend that we're not peeing our pants in a show of bravado."

Marco's shoulders shook as he laughed until he cried tears of mirth.

  "Two tickets for the 5pm show," Jean told the clerk, and he turned to Marco. "That means we're having dinner at about 7. I hope you're in the mood for popcorn, because I am in the mood for that cliché of that hands touching as they grab for popcorn in the bucket thing."

Marco shook his head, but the joy in his heart threatened to leap from his lips. As Jean paid for the tickets and turned towards the snacks counter, he unthinkingly leaned forward and pecked Jean chastely on the cheek.

In the entirety of his acquaintance with Jean Kirschstein, Marco had  _never_ seen Jean blush so hard as he did now. He was practically goggling at Marco, and the freckled individual, who had felt bold at first, was fast losing confidence the longer the blonde stared at him in stunned silence.

 _Oh no,_ Marco panicked.  _What if it felt gross? Please don't tell me this is the moment when he wakes up and realises how disgusting I am and--_

  "That's the first time you've ever kissed me," Jean said slowly.

Now it was Marco's turn to blush. "It was just a kiss on the cheek."

  "Still a kiss."

  "Jean..."

  " _Mon cœur_ ," Jean said softly. He reached around to grab the back of Marco's neck and pulled him towards himself and planted a long, hard kiss on Marco's lips that made his toes curl. " _Chéri_ , a kiss is a kiss."

* * *

The movie was only 90 minutes long, but Marco didn't remember anything after the first quarter.

Jean, bored with the "artsy-fartsy film with no action, no gore, no fun", had decided the best use of a dark room and very few people ("I told you nobody likes them except you" was Jean's shrugged reply) was to have a make-out session.

Marco would have protested if Jean hadn't had his tongue in his mouth and his thumb tracing the shell of his ear, igniting sparks where he touched Marco's skin.

By the end of the film, Marco was semi-erect, Jean was either not aroused or he had intentionally chosen a very baggy sweatshirt.

  "I'd ask if you wanted me to jack you off," Jean whispered into Marco's ear, making the freckled youth shiver. "but that wouldn't be very first-date-ish. My offer still stands, nevertheless. You only have to ask, _mon chéri_."

Marco shoved Jean, and the blonde just laughed. They quickly vacated the premises before the staff could catch them, and as they hit the street, Marco found himself reaching for Jean's hand, which had grabbed his immediately. It was so natural now, and Marco had to try not to beam like an idiot.

  "What are you in the mood for?" Jean asked, his fingers threading through Marco's smoothly. They fit like they were an old married couple, and Marco's heart warmed at the analogy.

  "Do you really want me to pick, or are you going to keep to that 'diet' of yours?" Marco teased. It all came so easily now.

Jean groaned. "Levi keeps me on a short leash. It's killing me every time I look at that stupid diet regime list of his. 'Abstain from oily and fried foods'. He might as well give me a death sentence. Half my diet is oily food, the other half is fried."

  "Sorry," Marco grinned sheepishly. "I'm with Levi on this one. Armin told me that the team is aiming for 104th Amateur MMA Championships."

Jean pondered this with a betrayed look, and Marco chuckled.

  "Fine," Jean gave in with a twinkle in his amber eyes that Marco didn't know what to make of. "Let's have Japanese."

Marco was speechless, and Jean quickly turned a street corner, then another, walked straight for a few minutes, then pulled up short by a tiny shopfront. It read 'Butterfly Sushi Restaurant & Delivery Service'.

  "I hope you know how to use chopsticks," was Jean's mischievous observation as he ducked into the shop, dragging Marco in behind him.

The interior of the shop was as frighteningly small as the outside, and Marco felt like an overstuffed bull in a china shop. There were only a few other customers inside, huddled together like penguins in the midst of a blizzard at the counter.

  " _Irasshima--_ Jean!"

Marco's head jerked around to see Jean air-kissing the cheeks of a pretty Asian girl who was as tiny as the restaurant itself.

  "Marco," Jean was grinning so hard, Marco thought his cheeks were going to crack. He had an arm around the narrow shoulders of the Asian girl. "Meet Butterfly- _chan_. She and I go  _way_ back."

 _Way back how_? was Marco's desperate unvoiced question.

  "Nice to meet you, Marco _-san,_ " she had a slight accent, but her friendly smile was contagious. "Jean's friends are always welcome here."

Marco noted with a sinking heart that Jean did not correct her when she said 'friends'. "Nice to meet you, too."

  "Come, sit!" she waved for them to take a seat on the small wooden chairs. Marco felt it squeak in protest under his weight, and turned crimson. Neither Jean nor Butterfly- _chan_ noticed.

  "Do you know what you want to order, or do you want a menu?" she asked over the counter.

  "I'll get two plates of _negitoro_ sushi, three  _higashi maguro_ , a soft-shelled crab handroll, and a plate of six California  _maki,_ " Jean said without hesitation. "For starters. Marco, do you want a menu?" _  
_

Marco was having trouble breathing, watching this cute Asian girl and Jean treat each other like... like...

  "Marco?"

He jerked around to look at Jean, who saw the turmoil in his eyes and sighed.

  "Butterfly- _chan_ is a friend of my sister's," Jean whispered to Marco. "That's how I know her."

When Marco didn't say anything, Jean launched into the full story while Butterfly- _chan_ got his orders.

  "Evangeline had a... Japanese phase. She was obsessed with everything Japanese, like reading manga, learning the language, eating the food, the mannerisms,  _everything_. She met Butterfly- _chan_ at an anime convention, and the two hit it off. Evangeline invited her over to the house a couple of times, and we got acquainted. Then Butterfly- _chan_ started working here, which is pretty near the university and she dropped me a message to tell me about it, so I occasionally drop in for meals whenever Levi puts me on that fucking stupid diet because the food here is both good _and_ healthy."

Marco breathed slightly easier, but he still couldn't forget the way Jean had neglected to correct Butterfly- _chan_ about the 'friends' thing.

Then Jean, completely unaware that Marco was fretting over it, tackled the issue while Butterfly- _chan_ was attending to other customers.

  "And I'm not telling her that you're my boyfriend," Jean said in a low voice. "because she's a fucking  _fujoshi_ , which means that if I  _do_ tell her, she's going to spaz all over the two of us. I brought Reiner and Bertholdt here once, and it was  _not_ a pretty sight."

Marco giggled, and Jean smiled. "There's that laugh."

Butterfly- _chan_ handed Marco a menu, and he perused it. Jean had to help him, because it was his first time eating sushi or sashimi. Jean advised him to go with whatever he was comfortable with, which was cooked food. He picked  _aburi_ salmon sushi, and it tasted so amazing that Marco wondered why he'd never tried Japanese food before.

  "You're holding your chopsticks wrong," Jean gently corrected his handling of the wooden sticks that served as culinary tools for most of Asian culture.

  "How're you so good at this?"

  "I told you," Jean rolled his eyes. "Evangeline had a phase."

As they ate their meal, punctuated with their laughter as Marco experimented with the sushi, the chubbier youth felt his heart growing light again. Until he was made acutely aware of a group of girls a few seats down, whispering and giggling to each other. They were darting furtive, pining looks at Jean, who was completely oblivious as usual. One of them actually excused themselves on the pretext of going to the toilet just so she could bump into Jean (the shop was tiny, but not  _that_ tiny that a girl in size 2 had to bump against him to pass) and apologise to him. She actually bent over so he could get a view of her cleavage, and fluttered her lash extensions at him. He shrugged at her apology, and turned back to his food.

Jean might not have cared, but Marco did. His heart felt like someone had wrapped it up in barbed wire, and then tightened it without preamble.

There would always be people like this girl, Marco realised. People who were more appropriate for Jean than he was, who would look better hand-in-hand with him when they walked down the street, so that when they PDA'ed, nobody would turn to stare.

And no matter how good the food actually was, Marco couldn't taste a bite of it for the rest of the meal.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is fifteen minutes past midnight, and I'm only halfway through the second chapter of the three chapters I am supposed to be studying for my test tomorrow at 3pm. Oyasuminasai! I hope you enjoyed this chapter (FLUFF FLUFF FLUFFFFFFFFFF and a dash of angst just to spice it up iamsosorry) and please do drop a comment (I demand comments they keep my soul and creative wit going)! Also, the Japanese food mentioned are all actual foods I have tasted and really like (except for the California maki, that's my brother's favourite). Do try them out when you have the opportunity!
> 
> And in case you haven't noticed... Butterfly-chan is really a tip of the hat to the amazing butterflychansan, author of the wonderful, heart-wrenching Wisteria and Forget-Me-Not series. Professor Johanna is my gift to the esteemed johannathemad (of the tumblr art fame for her immensely gorgeous Jeanmarco and other art).
> 
> (EDIT: THANK YOU MIZERA SO MUCH WHEW!)


	9. End of a Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean and Marco have their first date and Jean thinks it's happily ever after for the two, but is it really so simple?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if it seems rushed! I had to type this out in like an hour because I still have to study for tests!

After dinner at Butterfly- _chan_ 's, Jean and Marco walked back to the dormitory, bellies full and both contented. Or so Jean had assumed.

Marco's head was still a fluctuating mess of giddy delight of being on a date with Jean, soaring happiness that Jean was holding his hand... and deep-seated misery at the understanding that he was never going to be good enough for Jean. _There will always be people who would be more suited for him_ , Marco tried not to cry as he recalled the girls who had given Jean the come-hither and the flirtatious glances.

Girls who were beautifully slim, pretty and would fit Jean like a glove. Not him, fat and boring and... a  _guy_.

Even now, as they walked hand-in-hand back to the university premises, people on the street would stop what they were doing and stare at their intertwined hands as they passed.  _If Jean was with a girl, they wouldn't even give us so much as a second glance_ , was Marco's silent sob.

Heedless of his beloved's emotional turmoil, Jean was on cloud nine. A smile as broad as the curve of the full moon hanging in the night sky overhead was on his face, and he gave an internal sigh of contentment. _This is how it should be_ , Jean thought blithely.  _Us, in love. Happy._ _  
_

They didn't exchange a word the whole way back to their room, Jean because he thought that love filled the silence between them, Marco because he knew he would turn into a puddle of insecurity and tears if he so much as opened his mouth.

Once the door was shut behind them, Jean pulled Marco into his arms and kissed the freckled youth with the intention of making his knees collapse and whatever thoughts he had going on under that fine, silky black hair of his turn into exploding stars. He angled his head, and licked Marco's lower lip salaciously before pressing it deeper into the chubbier boy's mouth.

And Marco, weak-willed to Jean's advances despite his plaguing self-doubts and anxiety, responded with a passion he wasn't aware he possessed.

Their tongues intertwined like their fingers had just minutes before, and every sensation was going straight down to both boys' bottom half. Jean grabbed the back of Marco's hair, his passion now increasing by the second at the rate of a cheetah in full pursuit of its prey, and suckled on Marco's tongue. His other hand rubbed circles into Marco's lower back, and then dipped down to grab his ass. He splayed his palm over the seat of Marco's jeans, thinking in whatever small part of his mind that wasn't lost to outrageous lust for this freckled boy that Marco had that fabulous kind of ass that just  _demanded_ to be grabbed.

He squeezed Marco's butt cheek, thinking it would make Marco squeal or at the very most, moan. But instead, it undid the spell.

Marco jumped, and immediately pushed Jean away. His face was so red, he looked like he was going to burst like a cherry tomato. His lips were swollen and slick from Jean's tender but ardent loving. But his eyes... Jean couldn't tell what he was thinking, but it definitely wasn't good.

  "Marco..." his voice was gravelly with desire, and he reached out one hand to touch Marco again.

  "I... I'm tired," Marco said unsteadily, his chest rising and falling as he panted. "I'm going to go take a shower and go to bed. Y-you should, too."

 _Was that an invitation for sex?_ Jean wondered, startled by Marco's boldness.

  "Do you want me to wash your back for you?" thinking he understood Marco's intentions, he grinned wickedly. 

Marco gave him a confused stare. "Why would I want you to wash my back?"

Jean laughed. Marco could be so naïve.

  "I'm fine with sex in the shower, too," Jean winked at him. "But I would have thought you wanted it in bed, since it's probably your first time... it  _is_ your first time, right?"

But all Marco could think of was  _I don't want him to see me naked. I look like a cow on hormone injections right before slaughter, only without the layer of coarse hair to hide the cellulite and stretch marks. And why does he seem so used to it? Has he had experience having gay sex? Oh, what am I talking about. Jean's so freaking hot that anyone would want to have sex with him, of course he's got experience, Marco, you big idiot. All the more reason he wouldn't want someone like you. Someone inexperienced, someone boring and fat and..._

Marco had to run into the bathroom before Jean heard the sob that choked his throat or saw his red eyes, stung with unshed tears.

* * *

  "I think Marco is avoiding me," Jean said, half to himself.

Six pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. The usual gang was hanging out at the Coffee Wall, where you could find the shittiest coffee and the best hot chocolate on campus, so no one really understood why the fuck it was named the way it was.

  "Why would you think that?" Sasha's brow wrinkled. "I thought you guys were already dating. What, do you suck at anal sex, too?"

  "I can help you with that," Reiner offered, and Bertholdt nearly swallowed his hot chocolate down the wrong pipe. The muscular blond patted his lover's waist, around which his arm was wrapped. "Don't worry, babe. I'm not cheating on you. Just offering the noob some tricks and tips."

  "No," Jean said irritably. "That's not it. Fucking hell, we haven't even _had_ sex yet."

  " _What_?"

All of them gaped at him.

  "Haven't you guys gone on like, a million dates?" Connie was incredulous.

  "Four," Jean corrected, and he frowned. "He never initiates a kiss, not since that one time on my cheek. He's not looking me in the eye, he doesn't try to hold my hand, and he _always_ claims to be too exhausted right when we're getting into the mood for it."

  "Maybe he really is exhausted?" Christa asked carefully.

  "No, I don't think so," Jean shook his head, his lighter-coloured hair in serious need of a trim. " _Merde_ , if anyone is complaining, it should be me. Levi and Erwin are putting so many expectations on me I feel like my back is going to give. Besides, Marco already submitted his last assignment for the semester to Professor Johanna a few days before our second date, so no educational pressure there."

  "Levi and Erwin only have great hopes for you because you're the only idiot who turns up for every training," Ymir snorted. "Try skipping a few times. They'll let up. Heck, that's  _exactly_ what you should do. You should skip and have mind-blowing sex with Freckles. I bet that'll get him in the mood all the time."

Christa blushed on behalf of her girlfriend.

  "That's not just it," Jean told them, his tawny eyes now filled with worry. "He's hardly in the room nowadays. I used to come and go all the time and he would be there in the room to say goodbye or say welcome back. For fuck's sake, the only time I see him in the room is at night when we go to sleep. In separate beds."

  "Do you know where he goes?" Reiner asked, curious.

  "No," Jean sighed, putting his head in his hands. "I tried searching the Art wing, and the library, and any possible place he might go. He doesn't have any other friends that I know of to hang out with."

Jean's heart was aching and agitated. Where was Marco all the damn time? Did he find someone more interesting than him? Someone better-looking, a better fighter, a better friend... a better lover? His heart stopped, and twisted itself so hard he thought he was going to suffocate.

  "I'm going to try and find him again," Jean ditched the rest of his crappy coffee and grabbed his book bag, too anxious to sit still.

His friends gave varying types of responses of support and encouragement.

As he left the coffee shop, he felt his face settle into a worried expression. He thought they had been doing so well. Maybe Marco had been feeling a little awkward and shy that night of their first date, so he didn't want to rush into having sex. Jean was careful to be less forward and less hasty on their second date, determined to take things slow so Marco would ease into it. But Jean barely so much as kissed Marco, and the latter hid himself in the toilet until Jean was half-asleep and Marco had snuck into his own bed.

The next morning when Jean woke up at 9, Marco had vanished and left behind a note saying he was going to class. Jean knew for a fact that none of his classes started before noon.

Then Jean had to  _text_ Marco (it was his first time texting Marco, since he could always be counted on to be in their dorm room whenever Jean wanted to find him) to arrange their third date, and their fourth.

Marco had barely eaten anything on their third date at the fancy Italian restaurant Jean had hoped to impress him with, and the blonde had been left cursing himself when he recalled Marco's mom was a great cook, so Jean had most likely made him homesick, or it wasn't up to par with his mom's culinary skills. He vowed not to make the same mistake, and taken Marco to a fairly expensive French restaurant on their fourth date where there was snobby waiters and tempestuous chefs (Jean's family had a history with the restaurant, and he knew the head chef personally) but amazing authentic French food.

Marco didn't so much as take a bite. He just pushed it around the plate with his fork, and apologised to Jean, claiming a stomachache.

Jean, desperate, had offered to make Marco some chicken soup in the kitchen dormitory, but he just wanted to go to sleep.

 _What if going out with me isn't what he expected?_ Jean distressed.  _What if I'm too overbearing? Am I forcing myself on him? Am I a terrible kisser? I didn't even ask him if he was willing to be my boyfriend. Is that maybe why...?_

There was two days left to the end of the semester, and Jean had been forced to agree to go home for the winter break by his parents. He had planned on inviting Marco to his house for a week before Christmas Eve, which was mostly likely when Marco had to go home to spend the holiday with his family. He wanted to introduce the loveable sweetheart of his life to his parents and his little sister, whom he was certain would adore him just as much as he did. He was already imagining how it would unfold: having meals with his family, laughing and talking and discussing politics and news (Marco had a surprisingly good handle on current affairs, better than Jean did), playing Wii with his little sister, who would demand to follow them on their long walks to the picturesque park near his house... and then making out with Marco in a secluded spot near the lake that he knew was hidden from any other park-goers, spooning with him at night when they went to bed...

 _I'll ask him when I find him_ , Jean decided.  _Ask him to be my boyfriend, properly, and invite him to stay at my house._

He stopped short when he reached the dormitory. There was a moving truck outside the low building, and all-too-familiar boxes being loaded onto it.

People didn't bring all their summer clothes and textbooks and art supplies home for winter break. They wouldn't need it. So why was Marco's being loaded onto the truck advertising small-time movers for cheap hire?

His breathing turned shallow and his mind faded into a white haze as he ran into the building, past a man in overalls carrying an armload of boxes with Marco's things inside. The snow globe that Marco had gotten in a souvenir shop in Colorado, when his family had taken a road trip there when he was eight. The teddy bear his little brother had given him to keep him company lest he was lonely in the university dorm. Those were Marco's things. Why were they taking Marco's things?

He burst into the room they shared, and could only stare.

His half of the room was messy, as always. Clothes everywhere, bed unmade. Marco's half was stripped bare. The posters on the wall had been taken down, leaving behind A4-sized rectangles of uneven colouring where they once used to be. Even the sheets on his bed were gone, and only the mattress remained.

Marco. Where was Marco?

  "Jean?"

The voice was tremulous, and honey on Jean's ears. He spun around to see Marco standing in the doorway of the bathroom they shared, holding that stupid bright neon pink toothbrush of his (his mother had bought it for him, thinking it would be funny. Jean had laughed for half an hour) and fully dressed for a trip. A trip to somewhere Jean wasn't going to be.

  "Marco?" Jean's voice was more steady than he felt. "What's going on? Where are you going? School doesn't end for--"

  "I'm leaving the dorms," Marco interrupted, not meeting Jean's gaze. He was still chubby, visibly so under the coat, but Jean could tell he had lost a little weight. "I'm not suited to dorm life. Besides, it's not that long a train ride from my house to the Art wing."

  "Not suited to dorm life," Jean said slowly, heart pounding. "Marco..."

  "This is goodbye, Jean," Marco said softly, and Jean could see his eyes were pink-rimmed. His heart wrenched at the idea of him crying alone in their dorm, just minutes ago. "I... I don't want to see you again."

Jean couldn't breathe.

  "Goodbye," Marco whispered, brushing past Jean and leaving him. Leaving. Marco was leaving. Unless Jean did something about it.

The blonde grabbed Marco's arm, a little too hard. The freckled boy winced, but Jean was desperate. "Marco! Was- was it something I did? Something I said?"

  "No, Jean," Marco pried his hand off, still not meeting Jean's gaze. "It's nothing to do with you."

  "Are you breaking up with me?" Jean couldn't believed the words had left his lips, words he had never expected to say in his entire life. Words he had never expected to say, most of all, to Marco. His voice cracked.

Marco squeezed his eyes shut.  _Look at me_ , Jean wanted to shout at him.  _Tell me you're coming back. Tell me this is just some big, elaborate joke. Tell me you're not leaving me... not when I've finally gotten you._

   "Yes," Marco choked out. "Goodbye, Jean."

And he fled.

Jean stood there, still carrying his bag, unmoving. He heard a car door slam, an engine starting up, and Marco was gone.

He stood there for another one, two hours, an immovable statue. The sun dipped below the horizon, and the room was awash in darkness. Jean still didn't budge.

And Marco was still gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm am not half as sorry as I should be, because I just broke my own heart (I came up with this development while I was in the shower, of all places). Please drop me a comment and do not shed any tears. Or at least, not as much as I did while writing this.


	10. You're Not Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 months from the day Marco left Jean, and Jean is still struggling to get used to a life without Marco now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that I broke your hearts...

  "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Levi snapped.

Jean, the old Jean rather, would have set his jaw and stared down his five-foot-three coach and barely suppressed a sneer. He would have scoffed if Levi pointed out that Jaeger hadn't done anything to provoke Jean. He would have said it was Jaeger's fault for looking like a moron, and for having a face that asked to be punched. He would have shrugged off Levi's orders to go to the locker room and grab the first aid kit to clean up his cut knuckles, or put ice on his bruised jaw and the black eye from Eren's unexpected right jab. 

He would have gone back to his dormitory, and let Marco worry over him, and tell Marco about the fight. Marco would have made sympathetic noises, or agreed with him, or gently chastised him.

But this was Jean now, with no Marco waiting for him to come back to the dormitory room.

  "I'm sorry, sir," Jean said, subdued and not quite looking at his coach.

Levi was mildly taken aback. He knew Kirschstein was going through some personal issues (no one would tell him what, no matter how much he had threatened), but he hadn't expected the rebellious, defiant youth to just...  _apologise_.

  "Mikasa," Levi called across the room, brows drawing together in mixture of concern and unease. The black-haired, aloof beauty looked over from where she was standing with Armin, observing Eren's performance in the ring. "Get Kirschstein fixed up."

  "Coach--"

  "Shut up and let her do it," Levi was brusque, and he turned on his heel and briskly walking away before he could voice any more protests.

Mikasa Ackerman was still as gorgeous as the first day of freshman year, despite having chopped off her long, swinging mane of beautiful black hair. But Jean had been put off by her obsession with Eren, to the extent that she had quit MMA and cut her hair at his foolish demands. And then he had found Marco, with his adorable button nose, his patient smile, his fluffy hair the same colour as the ink he used to draw his sketches.

It had been 157 days since Marco had taken all that with him when he left the dormitory. When he left the small room that was Jean's and Marco's world of private peace and contentment.

There was no one sharing his room now. The walls were still naked, and there were still patches where Marco's sketches used to be. The mattress was collecting dust because Marco wasn't sleeping in it and no one was changing its sheets. The bathroom was no longer prepped with a hot bath where he would soak, with Marco sitting on the bathroom mat and bathing his knuckles in ice and treating them with antiseptic, laughing when he yelped at the sting.

 _You swing punches and take them all the time,_ Marco would tease.  _But you can't even stand the itty-bitty sting of antiseptic?_

Jean wasn't aware of Mikasa making him sit down on the bench where Marco had sat on the day of their first date. He didn't even flinch when Mikasa applied the antiseptic without applying ice to try and numb his knuckles first, like Marco would do. He didn't say anything when she handed him a bag of frozen peas (they kept a stock of it in a freezer in the coaches' office), exactly like the ones Marco would filch from the dormitory kitchenette for him to press against his bruises.

This was the girl he had spent four hours dreaming of kissing and touching her hair in freshman year, caring (albeit curtly and only because she'd been told to when she would rather care for Eren) for him.

But all Jean could think of was Marco, and the love he'd lost.

 

After Marco had gone, Jean had spent hours standing on his feet until Reiner dropped by (with condoms and lube, expecting that they were getting into the make-up sex mood). Reiner registered the empty half of the room, Jean's shocked demeanour, and the fact that he was still carrying his book bag and hadn't taken off his coat and scarf even though the room was sweltering from central heating. He wasn't even sweating.

He was too cold. He felt like Marco had taken everything warm and pleasant with him when he had left with that stupid fucking neon pink toothbrush. There was no trace, no hint, no clue that Marco had been living in the room with Jean hours before, except for the uneven patches on the wall. Not even a lingering scent of Marco's cinnamon shampoo.

Jean was too stunned to cry, too numb to hurt. Reiner had called up the whole gang and forced Jean to have dinner with them, over which they tried to extricate details of what had happened from him. But Jean remained silent, and the only thing they were certain of was that Marco was gone, and he had taken a part of Jean with him without even realising it.

Then it was winter break, and Jean wasn't even prepared or packed when his mother came by in the family car (the Kirschsteins had three cars in Trost, and more in the other countries where they took up temporary residences) with his little sister in the backseat. He answered their questions with monosyllabic answers, until they got the message that he didn't want to talk about anything. The ride home was long and silent and cold.

Winter break passed with Jean spending most of his time cooped up in his room, staring at nothing in particular as he lay in bed. The only times he got out was to go take a jog at the park, because his mom wanted the housekeeper to clean his room, and because Levi would send him texts to ensure he was sticking to his winter training regime. His father, stern and demanding of excellence though he was, was not insensitive to Jean's emotional state. His mother had probably had a word with him about it, and both had decided that Jean was at the age where they had to respect his privacy (although that didn't stop them from gossiping and speculating that it was probably a girl that had broken his heart). Mr. Kirschstein just reminded his son that he still had to get his grades and perform well for the tuition fees he was paying. Jean's mumbled acknowledgement rather than an exasperated roll of his eyes as he was wont to do when the patriarch of the family gave the same old lecture, surprised his father.

The blonde went back to school, carried on studying and handing in assignments and going for training. Even so, everyone could see that there was a change in the once-defiant, rebellious punk who now ignored them if he could help it and didn't even breathe so much as an word when someone did something really stupid or smiled at Connie and Reiner's antics. There were dark circles under his eyes from sleepless nights when he turned over in his bed and didn't see Marco, breathing even and slow in sleep. He spent his break times running across the campus to the Art wing, which was on the other end from the Business wing, searching and searching for the freckled boy. The general office had refused to give Jean the address of Marco's family home, because they said they had to respect their students' privacy and confidentiality unless it was an emergency. Jean tried to tell them that it  _was_ an emergency. He was dying on the inside.

Five months later, and Jean was certain that he was still brokenhearted. He was absolutely sure that he was still upset, and that he was still devastated by what he had lost too soon. But the problem was, he was too dead inside to feel it.

* * *

 

His phone buzzed in his pocket, notifying Jean that he had a received a Whatsapp image from Butterfly- _chan_.

He hadn't gone to her shop in ages, and made a mental note to visit the excitable friend of his little sister so she wouldn't be offended that he hadn't visited her in a long time. He slid the message open, and as the image was downloaded into his phone, he continued to read his Financial Analysis and Management notes as he walked back to the dormitory. He still didn't have a roommate, and the walls had evened out in colour now. There was absolutely no trace left that anyone had ever shared the room with Jean, and Jean liked to think that when the walls had evened out, so had his heartbeat whenever someone mentioned Marco's name. Which was never.

The image was downloaded, and Jean opened it.

He dropped his notes and the papers flew everywhere in the late spring breeze. He didn't move to pick them up. He couldn't even breathe.

A dark-haired man with a small goatee and in his late twenties was sitting at the counter of Butterfly- _chan_ 's shop, and he was struggling to use his chopsticks. The customer beside him was laughing, and trying to teach him the correct way to hold it.

He had lost weight, but he was still slightly pudgy and soft at the edges. His freckles were as prominent as ever, and now looked like they had increased in number. He looked healthier, fitter, more tanned.

But it was Marco, and Jean would have never mistaken those chocolate brown doe eyes, twinkling with humour, for anyone else's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...but I'm still going to continue to fucking break them like the piece of shit I am. (I have a test in two hours. I managed to prep myself in time, so now pray me well that I can ace this test so I can upload more chapters and hopefully ease your broken hearts!)


	11. And I'm Not There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 years on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some Kirschstein sibling interaction! Lots of descriptions of clothes and the Kirschstein family and Paris!

  "...an?  _Jean!"_ _  
_

Jean Kirschstein jumped and almost dropped the pile of clothing he was holding in his arms. Now completely irritable, he turned to look at his little sister. She had stopped growing at five feet two, but insisted that she was five feet three. Her dark hair hung around her shoulders in gentle waves (she just had it trimmed, after their mother had nagged at her for weeks to get it cut), and her face was unmade but still as attractive as their mother once claimed to be. Tawny ochre eyes, a cuter almond-shaped version of Jean's more sharp and narrow ones, glared at him.

  " _Je t’ai appelé trois fois_ ," Evangeline grumbled, taking the pile of clothes from him. "  _Pour qui penses-tu que c’est, tout ça?_."

Jean rolled his eyes but had to smile at the youngest Kirschstein. They didn't just share similar eye-color; they both disliked shopping, particularly on a weekend when every Parisian was out and about. But their mother had demanded that they buy their winter clothes before the good pieces were sold and they were left to walk around in their "silly garbage clothes". Evangeline had kicked up a major fuss about having to leave the house when she was busy doing God-knows-what on that laptop of hers, and Jean had been just as reluctant, preferring instead to work out in the home gym their father had installed at their Paris residence.

However, Camille LaRue-Kirschstein had not caught the eye of their father by being submissive and having no backbone. As a result, armed with her credit card and instructions to visit the Avenue Montaigne and not come home without at least three bags of winter clothing each, the Kirschstein offspring were left with no choice (their mother had confiscated Evangeline's laptop, and Jean couldn't just abandon his sister to an afternoon without her laptop... she'd hit the gym with him and taunt him as she ran faster and farther than he did on the treadmill and just piss him off in general).

  " _Essaie-les_ ," Evangeline pushed him in the direction of the changing rooms. " _et dépêche-toi, je veux rentrer à la maison."_

  " _Oui, oui,_ " Jean obediently went into the changing rooms, and proceeded to try on the clothing his sister had selected on his behalf. Given a choice, the blonde would have just worn a windbreaker or his old winter coat over a ratty sweatshirt and a T-shirt for the whole winter.

He tested the size of a maroon cashmere sweater and he glanced in the mirror. _I need a shave_ , he mused as he massaged his jaw. It was still bruised from his last practice match, and his cheekbones were more prominent than they had been in the days of his youth. Like his sister, he'd just had his hair trimmed not an hour ago and kept the undercut style that had been his for nearly all his life. The stylist had taken great care to cut it as per his directions ("  _juste dégager mes yeux, s’il vous plaît_ ") and used hair mousse to make it fashionably tousled.

His hair would go back to it's usual floppy, flyaway mess after he took a shower, so he didn't pay it any particular interest.

The black, maroon, white cashmere sweaters all fit perfectly and so did the two woollen trousers his sister had picked out. The navy sweater he had picked out clashed with the colour of his eyes, exactly as she'd insisted.

_Good thing I made Evangeline help me._

He gave himself once-over one last time before he left the changing rooms, noting that his piercing holes were closing. His father and his coach would no longer have another argument to pick with him on  _that_ front, at least. It had been no great loss to take them out and sell them on Ebay (who knew people wanted the used piercings going at 20 euros). He considered them a marker of his youthful rebellion, a sign that he had once been impetuous, rash and defiant as the waves in a storm.

  " _C_ _omment font-ils?"_ his little sister looked up from her phone, arching an eyebrow.

  " _Ceux que tu as choisis? Parfaitement_ ," Jean shrugged. She took the ones that fit from him and went to pay. That made Jean's third bag, at last.

She had already done her shopping, in record time, considering she was a girl with a sharp eye for detail and unrelenting determination to get exactly what she had in mind. In that aspect, she was exactly like their mother. Jean picked up their bags, and she came trotting over with his clothes all packed nicely into a carrier with the Yves Saint Laurent logo printed on the side. The siblings hit the cobblestoned street, simultaneously breathing exaggeratedly loud sighs of relief. They looked at each other, and laughed.

Pedestrians, both tourists and Parisians alike, couldn't help but give the pair a second glance. It was easy to mistake them for a beautiful couple out for a day of shopping, what with Jean's striking two-toned undercut, strong and masculine features, sinewy yet lithe build, and Evangeline's flowing dark waves and elfin princess attractiveness. Jean, for all his scruples against being fashionable, wore a ivory cowl-necked knit sweater under a (thinning) charcoal wool coat, khaki tapered pants (no one could see the fraying hem because he'd rolled them up twice at Evangeline's behest) and Sperry top-siders. Evangeline, just as reluctant to go shopping but equally reluctant to look like a reject-rack rover, had on a matching ivory cowl-necked sweater under a dark turquoise peacoat, with black slim-fit pants and (scuffed) gold Tory Burch flats.

They looked like a couple walking right out of an advertisement for a luxury brand, all wide grins and gorgeous features and windblown hair.

But if one looked closer, they would have noticed the unmistakably similar pale amber eyes and the way that their smiles matched a little too perfectly for them to be anything but siblings.

  "You are leaving for Nevada soon, yes?" Evangeline clumsily switched back to English, her words still slightly accented and awkward because she had not used the language in the three weeks the Kirschsteins had been in Paris. Their father had dealings here in their mother's native country, and their mother had decided it was the perfect time (Jean was in the midst of preparing for his Shooto competition in Nevada and Evangeline had just barely finished her university exams for her second year in International Business) to have a holiday in their fully-furnished apartment overlooking the Seine.

Their family was wealthy, there was no doubt about it. But that didn't mean the Kirschstein siblings had to like the idea of being uprooted at the whimsy of their parents when they were busy, even if it meant staying in a luxurious house with it's own housekeeping staff and a superb view.

  "Yes,  _ma belle_ ," Jean took the YSL bag from her and carried them all in one hand so he could put his free arm around his little sister's slim shoulders, having noticed the way she shivered when the wind picked up. It was undoubtedly going to be winter soon, and they should hurry home before the sun set and it truly got colder. He changed languages like he changed the gears, smooth and quick.

  "Can I come with you?" Evangeline's English lost its accent completely now, as her eyes lit up with excitement.

  "I'm afraid not," Jean grinned. " _Maman_ would kill me if I took you to the casino hotel where I am staying."

For all her expensive tastes, their mother had certain principles that she enforced on her children as well.  _No gambling,_ she had told them often and often.  _No getting drunk in a place where you won't have someone to count on for a safe ride home, no sex before marriage_ (though this one was mainly for Evangeline)  _and definitely no drugs and no smoking._

   "Are you still with that _putain_ _,_ Jess or something?" Evangeline never swore in English when she could help it. She claimed that "swearing in French is like wiping your ass with silk".  He knew she didn't come up with that line by herself, and had probably filched it from some movie.

  "Tess," Jean sighed tiredly at the mention of his current girlfriend. She had been a mature, sophisticated, elegant and sultry redheaded receptionist when he first met her at a bar in Hawaii, where he was participating in a competition. Now, she was catty, clingy, possessive and easily jealous of any girl who so much as walked past him on the street. When Jean told her he wasn't staying in Hawaii, she had demanded a long-distance relationship and that Jean reply her texts immediately. "Don't call her that. You don't even know what that means."

  " 'Whore'," Evangeline shrugged when her brother raised an eyebrow. "Is she meeting you in Las Vegas?"

Jean grimaced. "Hopefully not." But she was most likely going to be there, waiting for him with a vicious, territorial glint in her eyes and priming herself to pitch a torrent of demands and accusations that he was cheating on her simply because he did not reply her texts (which now came at the average frequency of every fifteen minutes).

  "You should break up with her," Evangeline repeated. "If you tell me you're going to marry her, I'll denounce you at your engagement party and I won't go to the wedding. Or maybe I _will_ go to the wedding, just so I can step on her train and make her strip and fall face flat and break that ugly nose of hers."

Jean glanced down at his little sister, who was perfectly serious. He had never seen her being quite this spiteful. "Wow. Where is all this coming from?"

  "Remember that time when you introduced her to  _papa_ and  _maman?"_ she asked. They were a few blocks away from their apartment now, and the sun was already sinking below the horizon. The street lamps were lighting up, and cast an orange glow on the road home.

  "Yes?"

  "She stepped on my foot, and she didn't apologise."

  "That's all?" Jean wrinkled his brow.

  "She also stole my crystal cross necklace," Evangeline now shot him a furious look. "The one you said looked nice on me, and then a week later you said it looked nice on her and asked her if she had bought it from the same place as I did."

Jean winced. "Okay, yes, I am going to break up with her."

Evangeline was satisfied. "Don't break up with her yet."

  "What?"

  "I want my cross necklace back," she insisted. "You have to meet her in Las Vegas and take it back and  _then_ you can break up with her."

  "Evangeline,  _jolie_..."

  "Please?"

He made the fatal mistake of looking at her when she begged.

  "Fine," Jean relented. "But you cannot tell  _maman_ that I bought the pants from UNIQLO."

His little sister walked under his arm with a bounce in her step, now pleased that she had gotten her way. _Just like our mother_ , Jean smiled ruefully. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took his arm off Evangeline's shoulders to see what the notification was. He was expecting, with some dread, to see another text from Tess. But it was an email, from a hilariously familiar address of  _weinerbraun69@gmail.com_.

  "You always tell me not to use my phone when in someone's company," Evangeline said petulantly.

  "It's an email from Reiner," Jean said excitedly, and Evangeline brightened considerably. "You remember him and Bertholdt, no?"

  "Yes," Evangeline giggled. "Butterfly- _chan_ calls them ReiBert."

  "Well, they're in Germany visiting Reiner's relatives," Jean smiled. "They want to know if we can host them for a week if they fly over to Paris."

  " _Yes, we can_!" Evangeline pumped a fist in the air. "I'll do whatever it takes to convince  _maman,_ so leave it to me."

Jean gave her a suspicious look. She blushed. "Okay, so maybe I want to eavesdrop on them making out."

  "I'll tell them you said no."

  " _Jean!"_

  "No eavesdropping," Jean warned. "No spying. No hidden cameras, no listening devices, no telling them your lurid fantasies or asking them for details on their sex life."

  "Fine," she muttered. Then to herself: "they're loud enough for half of Paris to hear, anyway."

Her brother just gave her a look, but couldn't quite deny it.

* * *

 

  "Thanks for having us," Reiner repeated, as they slid into a booth at the bar. The music was fairly unobtrusive, meant to facilitate conversation rather than shouting.

  "Your family is so kind," Bertholdt said shyly. Reiner had his arm around the taller one's shoulders, and Jean's heart had a twinge of envy; they were a couple going strong at nine years now, and this was their celebratory anniversary trip. "And your mom and sister are  _beautiful_."

  "You're welcome," Jean grinned. "Besides, Evangeline was practically  _demanding_ to have you two over."

  "Can't imagine why," Reiner winked, and Jean rolled his eyes. "Anyway, how's that girlfriend of yours doing? Jess?"

  "Tess," Jean corrected. "I still haven't told her I wield double swords."

Reiner and Bertholdt just stared at him, utterly confused.

  "It's slang for 'bisexual'," Jean told them. "I picked it up from Butterfly- _chan_."

  "You still talk to her?" Reiner couldn't help a wrinkle of his brow. He didn't have a happy acquaintance with the Japanese girl.

  "Evangeline does, and she occasionally  tells me how she is," Jean shrugged. "I heard she's opening her third outlet, this one in New York. She's doing pretty well for herself."

  "And you?" Bertholdt asked gently. "Are you doing well?"

  "I'm doing great," Jean assured the gentle giant. "I'm participating in the Nevada Shooto competition. Reiner?"

  "Thinking about it," the muscular blonde rubbed his chin. There was some stubble there, and Jean was uncertain as to whether it was intentional or he just hadn't shaved yet. "I haven't fought in a proper match for a long time. I've been too busy training the freshmen at the university."

Reiner had taken over Erwin's job at the university, coaching the MMA team. He still participated in matches now and then, but he mostly focused on training the uninitiated. Or making them cry. That being said, Erwin was now (according to Bertholdt, who helped his boyfriend keep in contact with their ex-coach) living in San Francisco, legally married to Levi and employed as a senior coach at the AB MMA Academy, while being a full-time father to two children.

  "Connie's a web designer in Florida," Reiner laughed. "Sasha says he's putting on weight around the middle. So is she, for different reasons."

  "Sasha's pregnant?" Jean's eyebrows shot up. He had attended the pair's wedding three years ago, and had given a speech as Connie's best man. " _Again_ _?"_

  "Yep. That makes number two of the Springer brood." Reiner gave his boyfriend a leer. "If Bertholdt here could get pregnant, we'd have a brood of about a hundred fucking kids by now."

Bertholdt elbowed his boyfriend, turning a bright red and sweating profusely. He murmured an apology on his boyfriend's behalf, but Jean just laughed.

  "I should consider getting married soon, I guess," Jean said thoughtfully. His friends' eyebrows disappeared into their hairlines. "Evangeline was just telling me that if I got married to Tess, she'd only go to the wedding just so she could step on the train of Tess' gown so she would fall on her face and break her nose. I don't know how so much hate can be contained in such a small person."

  "It's compressed inside them," Reiner said sagely. "That's why short people are so dangerous. And tall people like Bertholdt here--" he squeezed his boyfriend's thigh and the six-foot-two man jumped "--are so nice and easy to tease."

  "Figures."

  "But are you really serious about getting married?" Bertholdt asked anxiously, swatting aside his boyfriend's hand. "I mean, to Tess?"

  "Fuck no, not to Tess," Jean shook his head emphatically. "I'm just saying in general. My dad wants me to take over the family business soon, so he can retire and hit the gym more often and get better abs than I do."

  "Your dad's in pretty good shape for a sixty-year old man," Reiner pointed out.

  "Exactly."

But a worried expression had come over Bertholdt's face, and the other two noticed.

  "What's up?" Jean asked.

  "I don't know..." Bertholdt chewed his lower lip and twisted his fingers. "It's just... I met Marco the other day."

Jean's jaw muscle twitched, but that was it. His heart rate didn't stutter, and he was breathing evenly. His voice was steady, disturbingly so.

  "Oh, really?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINISHED MY FAM TEST. Tomorrow is audit, but I'm a little shit so I'm just kept writing because I had to get it out of my system so I can get audit theory in my head.
> 
> ENJOY FRIENDS I AM GONE GOODBYE
> 
> (EDIT: YOU MAY ALL BOW DOWN TO MIZERA)


	12. Can't Break What's Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bertholdt has news about Marco, but does Jean still care? Or is he over Marco already?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM BACK FRIENDS

  "It was in New York," Bertholdt fiddled with the napkin, worrying the logo of the bar with his thumb. He was starting to sweat buckets under Jean's indifferent yet intense gaze. "Reiner and I were there for..."

He gulped.

  "Honeymoon," Reiner told Jean.

  "It's not a honeymoon unless you guys get married," Jean said irritably. "Besides, you guys go everywhere all the damn time just to say you 'had sex here'."

  "Not the point," Reiner waved a dismissive hand at his long-time buddy and pointed at Bertholdt, who actually squeaked.

  "We were at this café, and then Reiner went to the bathroom," Bertholdt stammered. "And when he got up, I saw the person who was sitting behind him. I didn't know who it was at first, because he'd changed his hairstyle."

For some strange, unintelligible reason, Jean felt his a dull throb in his chest, where his heart was. Or where it used to be, at least.

  "So I didn't pay any attention, until I heard him laughing," Bertholdt nearly bit his tongue talking. He wasn't used to talking so much, preferring to let Reiner's mouth do most of the talking. And other things. "I thought his voice was familiar, you know, because of that one time at Ymir's party? Then he got up and left, and when he passed in front of the mirror on the opposite wall, it was Marco. I mean, he looked different. At first, I couldn't believe it was him, because he looked so different. He lost  _a lot_  of weight."

  "I can testify to that," Reiner now had his part of the story to share, apparently having returned from the toilet of the café by the time Marco was leaving. "I walked past him, and I don't think he recognised me because he just smiled and said sorry for bumping into me. Do I really look that different from our university days?"

He looked exactly the same, except he now sported a five o'clock shadow. Jean told him so.

  "Well, anyway," Reiner continued. "I didn't recognise Marco at first, either. He's gotten all skinny and fit and good-looking-- not that he wasn't good-looking before, but you know what I mean. He's just really... different. Kind of hot now, too. He was wearing really stylish clothes, kind of like the ones your mom makes you wear. Not your trashy, holey jeans or band T-shirts. Like, a blazer with sleeves pushed up to the elbows and V-neck T-shirt kind of thing."

Jean was finding it hard to swallow now, and he attributed it to his dry throat.

  "Well, whatever," Jean said offhandedly, and flagged down a waitress. "Let's order."

Bertholdt and Reiner exchanged glances as Jean told the leggy brunette waitress that he wanted three draft beers, and some snacks like salted peanuts. They already had dinner, so they weren't too concerned about drinking on an empty stomach, and neither of them planned on having more than they could handle, so they would still be able to walk the three bus stops back to Jean's house in a straight line.

  "There's one more thing," Bertholdt put forward, trepidation evident in both his face and voice.

  "What?" Jean's voice was so chilly, so curt, that the giant of a man gulped audibly. Reiner gave Jean an exasperated look that said,  _don't frighten him anymore than he already is._

  "Marco was with someone," Bertholdt couldn't meet Jean's gaze now, and instead chose to stare at his lap. His hands had stopped fidgeting, and the napkin was shredded. Some small, absent part of Bertholdt's mind wondered if it was a bad omen.

When Jean didn't say anything, the dark-haired man darted a glance at him, and found him entirely expressionless. Bertholdt and Reiner exchanged glances again, now more concerned than before. The air between them was pregnant with a heavy silence that made the couple incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like an eternity before Jean responded.

  "And so?" Jean shrugged, ochre eyes turning positively glacial. "What does that have to do with me?"

* * *

 

  "What are you doing here?"

Evangeline shut the door behind her, a pass dangling from a cord around her neck. She had a shit-eating grin on her face, and Jean relented. He got up off the plastic foldable chair and picked up his baby sister in a hug that had her feet flying off the ground.

  " _Ew_ _!"_ Evangeline practically shrieked in horror. "You're all sweaty and sticky and gross! _Ne me touche pas!"_

  "What are you doing here?" Jean repeated, when he had put her down and held her at arm's length.

  "I persuaded  _maman_ to let me come," she said proudly. "I told her I was being a supportive and good sister by coming to cheer you on."

  "The match is over," he said dryly. He had won, with 10 points to his opponent's miserable 2. The man had refused to shake Jean's hand, much to the booing and displeasure of the audience.

  "Yes, but what  _maman_ doesn't know, won't hurt her," Evangeline wiggled her eyebrows. "You look like someone beat the crap out of you, considering you won."

  "Are you going to take care of my boo-boos?" he teased, ruffling her hair.

  "Ask Tess to take care of them for you," Evangeline said sourly. "I saw her outside the hotel lobby when I was checking in. I was going to stay in your room, but if she's here..."

Jean wordlessly walked over to the bag on the vanity table and rummaged in it for a while before pulling out something that hung from a long, thin black rope. It sparkled when it caught the light, and Evangeline gasped. She took it from Jean, and the joy in her eyes that he saw had definitely been worth the screaming and clawing and slapping that he had suffered last night until he called security and had her escorted in a shameful, howling manner from his room. The mention that she was still on the premises made Jean scowl. There was nothing he despised more than clingy, unrelenting ex-girlfriends. He had dated models, minor actresses, a singer or two hoping to make their big break by using his status to boost their own, yet still found that no ex had been quite as despicable as Tess thus far.

  "You broke up with her?" Evangeline wanted to confirm.

  "Yep," Jean tapped his cheek. "She slapped me. Twice."

  "You probably deserved it," Evangeline mused. "How did you do it?"

  "I just took the necklace off her--" and she had thought that Jean wanted sex and was all ready to play hard-to-get "--and then told her that I didn't like her anymore and I wanted to break up with her. I asked her to get her stuff and go."

Evangeline just stared at him. "Okay, Tess is a  _pouffiasse_ , but no girl deserves to be dumped like that."

  "She tried to convince me to marry her, for an hour before I broke up with her," Jean pointed out, lip curling into a sneer as he remembered the repulsive idea. "And then after I broke up with her, she tried to convince me that she was pregnant with my child so I  _had_ to marry her."

  "Okay, yes, she deserved to be dumped like that."

Jean laughed. "Now that that's settled, go grab your stuff from the room you booked and put it in mine. I'll call them up later and ask them to send up an extra bed. Mine's a single suite, so there should be enough room."

  "Oh, can you ask them to send up two?"

Jean slowly turned around and raised an eyebrow at his baby sister, who was looking at him like it was the most reasonable request she had ever made. It wasn't, because the most reasonable request she had made of him had been when she was four and he was nine and she had demanded that he pick her up and carry her like the princess that she was (that was exactly what she had said, only in French) because she was tired of walking. They had been a scant 30 yards from their house, and she had been sitting on a bench watching Jean play with the other boys in their neighbourhood because she wanted to " _be the princess that everyone wanted to save but saved herself instead because they were all boys_ ".

  "Why two?" Jean asked, struggling not to raise an eyebrow again. It was getting to be a habit where his baby sister was concerned, and he wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing.

  "Because Butterfly- _chan_ came with me," she gave him a sunny smile. "She's in the casino right now."

Jean covered his face with one hand and groaned, not saying anything. After the longest while, with Evangeline poking him in the abs for an answer, he sighed and nodded.

  "I'll leave it in your capable hands then!" his little sister said cheerfully, pushing out the door. Jean rolled his eyes and made a shoo-ing motion with his hand.

Evangeline walked past managers, coaches, participants (some of whom asked her for her number and she asked them if they could count and gave them 'one' - her middle finger), humming contentedly. With the precious crystal cross that she had been given by her  _grande tante_ back in her possession and her brother's love life secure in bachelorhood and no mean girlfriends and a five-star hotel equipped with an all-you-can-eat buffet, she was so blithely oblivious to her surroundings that it had taken the very cute and very out of place man with a freaking galaxy of freckles on his face four times to get her attention.

  "Sorry, I'm kind of scared to ask anyone else and I'm really lost and--," he had a nose that was practically screaming at her for her to boop it, and she did it because she was happy and she wanted to oblige the button nose. "Huh?"

She burst out laughing. "I'm so sorry. Your nose is just too cute. You were saying?"

  "Um," he blushed, and now he looked like a strawberry and she wanted to pinch his cheeks. It should be illegal for a man who was probably her brother's age to be this cute. He was about her brother's height, too, but with a rounder jaw, and he looked like he belonged in a daycare centre taking care of equally adorable children rather than here behind the scenes of an MMA competition with hardened, tough fighters anxious to put their fist through someone's face. He was kind of slim, but despite his snug black blazer rolled up to the elbow with white cuffs and V-neck shirt and jeans (an outfit of which she approved), Evangeline could easily describe him as having the kind of body that would gain weight if he didn't make his every-other-day trip to the gym and watched what he ate. Although he would probably look good tubby... like a gigantic fluffy teddy bear, Evangeline mused. 

  "Would you happen to know where Jean Kirschstein's room is?" Evangeline's eyes snapped up to meet his. He had soft chocolate brown eyes, like a young female deer's eyes (what were they called? Oh, right. Does) and they were so sweet. But Evangeline was fairly protective where her brother was concerned, and by fairly, she meant  _very._ This guy, for all his freckles and boop-able (and booped) nose and adorable blush and just general cuteness, did not have a pass like Evangeline's.

  "You don't have a pass," she pointed out, eyes narrowing.

  "Uh," he was visibly flustered, but he didn't look like a bad guy, so Evangeline decided to cut him some slack. He was probably a big fan of her brother's.

 _Maybe this was some once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him to meet his idol? Shaking hands and giving an autograph and maybe even taking a selfie together... well, that wasn't going to kill Jean, was it? But what if it killed this guy? What if he committed suicide if she didn't let him see his idol because he was never going to have this chance again?_ Evangeline's thoughts careened wildly from errant wondering to genuine panic.

  "I'll go ask him if he's decent," Evangeline told him. "Give me a moment."

He mumbled something incoherently, and Evangeline surmised that it was noises of shy gratitude. She took out her phone, glad that for once, she had taken the deliberation and initiative to change the network operator before coming down to see her brother. It was going to save this freckled man's life.

  "Jean?" Evangeline didn't notice how the freckled man flinched when she said his name. "It's me--" " _Of course I know it's you, I've been hearing that silly voice of yours for almost twenty one years now"_ "--there's a guy out here who really wants to meet you and I think he's a big fan of yours and this is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet you and I think he might commit suicide if you don't meet him."

The cute guy protested, but she waved him aside and mouthed "trust me" at him.

There was a beat of silence, and Jean sighed. Evangeline knew it was a done deal.

  "Fine," Jean groaned. "But you and Butterfly- _chan_ had better not bother me later when I'm trying to sleep. No late night movies. No fangirl-ing over any kind of nonsense. Deal?"

  "Okay," it was a small price to pay to save someone's life. Evangeline winked at the freckled cutie, who blushed a bright scarlet again.  _Strawberry._ "I'll send him over now with my pass. Be nice! Give him your autograph or something to commemorate, okay?"

  "Yeah, yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND NOW GOODBYE FRIENDS I AM GONe (aGAIN)


	13. What Once Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean and Marco reunite after more than 5 years, and many things have changed in the space of absence. Or have they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ALMOST FUCKING MISSED MY TEST and my parents were super furious and they kept lecturing me and I was so demoralised. Then I read all your sweet comments and this happened.
> 
> (sorry I uploaded twice and forgot to edit some parts! AND THANK YOU MIZERA)

Jean hung up, grabbed a yellowing towel that had probably been white some centuries ago and began to wipe himself down.

He was exhausted, and cranky, and the last thing he wanted was to have to meet a fan. He fucking hated his own fan-meets; too many cameras flashing in his eyes and too many people screaming and wanting to touch him where he wasn't comfortable with people touching him. As the memory surfaced, Jean shuddered and tugged on a fraying gray hoodie that advertised Abercrombie & Fitch. It had been one of the armload of clothes he had received as a gift for doing a modelling stint for the brand, substituting another model who was unable to make the shoot. He did it all the time and got free goodies like this (which was one of the reasons why he didn't see a need to go shopping like his mother ordered), even if he didn't like standing half-naked for the whole damn world to see. But it had been a demand from Ymir, who was now working as an editor at a magazine and it had been Christa's job as a manager on the line.

So stand half-naked for the whole damn world to see it was.

He was stuffing his gear into his bag when the knock on the door came. Heaving a sigh, he told them to come in and took out a pen. He was seriously hoping that this guy didn't ask him to sign--

  "Hi, Jean."

Jean blinked and, for reasons he didn't really try to understand, was proud not to feel his heartbeat stutter or waver in the slightest. Slowly, very slowly, he turned around. His grip neither relaxed nor tightened, as he registered his 'fan'.

  " _...he looked so different..."_ _  
_

Reiner and Bertholdt had been right. He hardly recognised this stranger who stood in the doorway of his backstage room, a man in smart clothes and Topman boater shoes. He knew they were Topman, because his sister had given him a pair two Christmases ago, and he had worn them every time he went out until the soles wore thin and they had to be thrown out.

He had been featured in a magazine spread mere months ago with those same shoes, in that exact same Ralph Lauren blazer, same Armani jeans, same HUGO BOSS V-neck shirt. He felt his jaw clench at the sick idea of someone trying to copy the outfit he had worn out on a trip to the theatre with his little sister.

This was not the Marco Bodt he had fallen in love with. This was a stranger who was trying to emulate him, and whatever shred of decent courtesy he had been holding on to just minutes ago, dissolved into absolutely nothing. This particular door had been brutally slammed in his face some five years ago, and was now rattling on its rusted hinges. Jean didn't want it to open.

The stranger cleared his throat. "Um."

Jean wordlessly put the pen back into his bag. He wouldn't be needing that now. He didn't feel it, but the stranger could feel the temperature drop several degrees.

  "Y-you look good."

He mentally scoffed. His jaw was swollen and throbbing like a motherfucking bitch, and his nose hurt only slightly less from his last opponent's left hook (hadn't seen that one coming, so maybe he had deserved that). There were at least half a dozen places on his body where he wanted to put frozen peas, a stinging cut on his lip, and he  _really_ needed a hot bath.

  "I'm sorry," the freckled stranger's voice cracked. Jean felt something crack inside him when it did, and it wasn't a pleasant feeling. He didn't like it, and he wanted it to stop. He grabbed his bag. "I don't know what to say to you."

Jean's grip on his bag did not slacken. His voice unexpectedly steady when he spoke.

  "Then tell me what you should have told me that day," Jean lifted his gaze to look at the man who had once been the boy he loved so desperately, so fully, so completely. The man who had Marco's freckles, Marco's button nose, Marco's eyes. "Five years ago, in that room. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me why, why I spent the next few months blaming myself for something I didn't understand, grieving for something I have just now come to understand that I have lost forever."

  "I'm sorry," this man looked down, and his words blurred together with unspoken emotions. Jean no longer felt that old urge to force him to meet his gaze. He just felt... nothing. "I... I just wanted to make myself better. To be better. I wanted to be able to stand next to you, so that no one could say that you made the wrong choice. I never meant to hurt you."

  "Maybe not," Jean felt a dull anger rising. It blinded him and it now threatened to choke him, but his voice remained clear and decidedly calm. "but you did. I never asked for this. I never cared what anyone said about me. And I never wanted to see you again. So leave. You had no problem doing it the last time."

The man stood there, shoulders shaking. He still couldn't meet Jean's gaze, and that was perfectly fine with the blonde.

  "Not leaving?" Jean said icily, pulling his bag onto his shoulder. "Fine. Then let me have the honour of doing it this time."

He pushed past the man whose hair he once loved in another life and had wanted to run his fingers through it, but was now stiff with wax in some trendy hairstyle Jean decided that he utterly despised.

He walked away from the man whose love handles he had once adored and wanted to embrace in his sleep, but were now replaced with a trim waistline.

He left behind on the man whose tears would have once upon a time broken his heart, but he now felt nothing for because there was nothing left to break at all.

* * *

 

  "You Kirschsteins are a bunch of idiots."

Buttefly- _chan_ , now toting a very eye-catching, dark-red pompadour hairstyle, wrinkled her pert nose. She walked alongside him as they made their way to a Japanese restaurant of Jean's choice (Butterfly- _chan_ wanted to check out the competition in Vegas so she insisted on Japanese), both of them clad in nondescript clothing in an attempt not to attract any attention to Jean, whose face was up on an LED screen at multiple hotels advertising his matches.

  "I invited you along because I needed a distraction," Jean slanted her a sideways glance. "Not because I wanted you to remind me how much I've screwed up my love life."

  "There is that," Butterfly- _chan_ pointed out. "And then there is the fact that only idiots wear sunglasses at night."

Jean tipped down the vintage gold wire-framed Oakleys at her. "If I took these off, we'd be mobbed."

  "Awfully big ego you have there. Careful you don't crush me with it. I supposed it comes with the territory of being an idiot."

Just two hours ago, Jean had returned to his suite and quickly made a call to the concierge to send up two roll-out beds. He cancelled his little sister's room, and had their things sent up to his. He proceeded to answer his mother's voice mail (" _Évangéline est-elle avec toi?"_ ), his missed calls from his coaches and managers, and even his landlady's text about whether he wanted to extend his rental on his apartment in New York, seeing as he hadn't been in there for over a year (he told her to put it on hold for him unless there were other people who wanted to rent it).

Then, and only then, he had given himself the luxury of taking a nice, hot and soothingly scented bath.

He refused to let his mind wander back to what had just unfolded, and preferred to think of it as closure. Yes, closure was a good word for it.

His sister came back with Butterfly- _chan,_ who had won twice as much as she had bet at the blackjack tables, and he found himself asking them if they wanted to go out and eat dinner with him. His little sister turned green at the mention of food, and explained that she had just gone after the Wall of Fame at the hotel's all-you-can-eat buffet. Butterfly- _chan_ insisted on Japanese, and now here on the streets of Las Vegas they were, with Jean inexplicably telling Butterfly- _chan_ his "closure" in very brief detail. To his surprise, the Asian girl didn't so much as bat a fake eyelash.

  "He is in love with you," Butterfly- _chan_ told him as gently as a girl who thought he was an idiot could. "That's why he did all that and then came back."

  "No explanation, no calls, no letters, no texts," Jean said, finding his blood boiling at the recollection of his pathetic state five years ago. "I was such a miserable bastard. If I could go back in time and meet myself from then, I would have--"

  "But you can't," she said sagely. "What was, is, and always will be. You might regret it, and you might hate yourself for being so vulnerable. But this Marco person had it worse, didn't he?"

  "I fail to see how someone who just ups and leaves their boyfriend without so much as an explanation of why, can have it worse."

  "He was unhappy. He was afraid. Apollo was in love with him--"

  "Who?"

  "Greek sun god, totally hot, totally irrelevant right now except as an analogy," she imperially waved a dismissive hand. "My point is, a totally hot guy--" "Wow, you think I'm hot?" "--with a bright future, rich family, etcetera, is in love with a boy with an inferiority complex that has been bred into his bones for years. If you were that boy, how would you feel?"

  "Fucking glad, I would assume," Jean said flatly. "Seeing as he was apparently harbouring a fucking big crush on me all through high school."

  "Which makes his situation even more pitiable," Butterfly- _chan_ ignored his look of disbelief. "He now cannot believe that this man, whom he once believed to be unreachable and unattainable and incapable of so much as even  _noticing_ him, is now professing his love for him. He's happy, of course, that's for sure. But then you take him out on a date, and while he is happy, that is only at first.

  "He starts to notice things," Butterfly- _chan_ continued in a story-like voice even though her English language and grammar was fairly questionable. Jean felt his mood growing grim. "Things that this Apollo would not notice, blinded by love and delight that his love is accepting his invitation of a date. Things like girls, throwing themselves at this Apollo's feet. Things like people, staring at him because 'what is he doing with someone like that?'. Things that this Apollo believes are merely insignificant, but to this boy... these things are unavoidable reality."

  "Please stop calling me 'Apollo'," Jean rolled his eyes. "What is your point?"

Butterfly- _chan_ gave him a dirty look and her voice resumed it's normal tone. "Did you just miss everything I said?"

  "I heard you, but I still don't see your point."

  "My point is," she sighed. "Marco loves you. He loves you more than you think, but he's just really misguided. And insecure."

  "I tried," Jean said calmly, but there was underlying frustration in his voice. "I tried to make those insecurities go away--"

  "And you thought you could do it just by telling him pretty words?" she said, abruptly incensed. "You thought professing your love and adoration for him would make them all go away, just like that?"

  "Then how?" Jean stared down at her, his pale amber eyes glittering with pent up emotions he refused to feel. Couldn't feel. "How the hell was I supposed to teach someone to love himself? Pay for plastic fucking surgery?"

  "No!" Butterfly- _chan_ yelled, startling a few tourists who had the misfortune of passing by. They were still walking, despite their heated argument. "That's not it! You don't get it!"

  "Then tell me!"

  "I don't know how to, either!"

Jean gave her a long, disbelieving and utterly furious look. "Then why the fuck are you preaching to me?"

  "I'm not," she said quietly, now. "All I know is, you made a mistake by letting him go."

They continued the walk to the restaurant in silence, and did not see the flash of a camera, assuming it was the bright lights of Vegas rather than a forewarning of what was going to unfold in the near future.

 

 


	14. No Longer Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco has lost everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TEST ARE OVER AND I WATCH MALEFICENT (eh) AND HTTYD (SHRIEKING NOISES). Have some happy, on me.

  "Could you pass this to... Jean Kirschstein for me, please?"

Marco had to take a deep breath before he could say his name without choking on it. It was still there, the ball that had lodged itself in his throat and lasted hours after Jean had slammed the door behind him. Was this what Jean had felt like, five years ago? When Marco had done the same thing?

The concierge desk receptionist, a gorgeous blonde with perfect hair, perfect teeth and even a perfect name (Janice), took the paper bag from him with a perfect smile. "Of course."

She looked like a walking toothpaste ad, and sounded like one, too.

  "T-thanks," Marco smiled as best he knew how, but it was hard. After all, how does one maintain a visor of politeness and courtesy when everything inside them has been pulverised by a righteously furious and upset MMA pro? He had expected the temper, the shouting, the heat of Jean's anger. He had been prepared for the explosive outburst, the flash of violence, even.

But he had not seen it coming encased behind a wall of ice so thick and so cold, it burned more than the flames he had imagined would. The walk back to his motel room had been one Marco could not remember. He could not remember going into his room, and collapsing on the squeaking bed, feeling like he had just been run over by a cement truck. He only remembered Jean's face as he had stormed past Marco, jaw set and cheekbones glaring as his face tightened in pure, unadulterated fury, and then it was morning and he could not recall how he had gotten there. He spent the next few hours just sitting on the squeaky, creaking bed, wondering how it could have gone so ridiculously wrong. And now, at 8pm in the hotel he had just come to last night, he was handing over a paper bag filled with the most precious things he had ever had the opportunity and honour of owning.

  "It's not going to explode or anything, right?" Janice asked jokingly.

  "What? No!" Marco was horrified at the idea.

  "Just checking."

He gave her another half-hearted smile and left the hotel lobby. That was it. That was all he had left of Jean Kirschstein, sitting inside a paper bag in the perfectly manicured hands of Janice of the toothpaste ad perfection. He was giving back the piece of Jean's heart he had stolen, and now... now what? What did he have left? What was he going to do? His entire life from that day five years ago... it had been purposed with the belief that if he worked hard enough, he could stand proudly beside Jean and no one would raise so much as an eyebrow. He wasn't so arrogant to believe that Jean would run towards him through a meadow of flowers and pick him up and kiss him passionately, declaring his undying love for him. He wasn't so foolish or so ignorant to believe that he hadn't hurt the one boy, the one man, who had ever really saw beyond his layers of fat and misery. He had known, and the knowledge hurt like a burning iron inside his chest, that he had scarred Jean badly. So badly, he knew better than to expect any splinter of forgiveness, much less a second chance.

But he had hoped, with a desperation and fervour that fuelled his actions during these last five years, that Jean would one day, maybe, just let him be an acquaintance. Not even a friend, but perhaps someone he could have coffee with once in a blue moon, without anyone passing judgemental stares over the two of them as they talked about Jean's problems or anything under the sun. If Jean talked about his relationship problems with Marco... no doubt it would make his heart throb so hard it physically hurt, but it was an unavoidable reality. Marco had surrendered his place as Jean's  _chérie_ , his  _cœur_. It was only natural that he would be--

Marco pulled up short in front of a news store, a flashy magazine with screaming headlines catching his eye:  _"Latest development in MMA Pro Fighter's love life! Who is this exotic new beau? Extra! An ex retells her story about what it was like to be Jean Kirschsteins' lover."_

"Not buying, no reading," a heavy-set Indian man waved a hand in Marco's direction when he bent closer to see the photograph that had been printed on the front page.

So Marco took out his nearly-empty wallet, and paid for the magazine. He was already staying in a sleazy motel, and was taking the night bus back to Trost tonight now that there was nothing left for him to do in Las Vegas. It wasn't like he had any cash to spare for the casinos; just the Ralph Lauren jacket he was wearing now had made a meteorite-sized crater in his bank account.

He managed to quell the urge to read it as he walked back to Blue Bear Motel, it's neon light flickering to demand the maintenance it was so badly deprived of. He mechanically packed away the meagre travel belongings, and took a bus to the bus interchange. Even on the rattling, rickety short bus ride, he refused to look at the magazine in his laps.

  "Celebrities," an old man who looked an awful lot like (and smelled like) a vagrant, peered over his shoulder into the magazine and sneered. "Can't keep it in their pants, huh?"

Marco forced himself to be polite and nod in agreement, but the stranger's comment was only rubbing salt in his raw wounds.

The bus interchange was nearly empty, save for Marco himself, the vagrant (?) old man and a couple of hitchhikers. The bus back to Trost was waiting in the departure bay, and he climbed aboard, mildly relieved to see that the old man was curling up on the plastic chairs in the waiting lounge, apparently making the bus interchange his home for the night. The bus, too, was empty, and when it started up on the long way home... Marco finally summoned up enough courage to look down at the magazine cover.

It was Jean, no doubt about it. He was wearing a battered Chicago Bulls cap (the only other sport besides MMA that Jean could tolerate was basketball, and very rarely, baseball) pulled low over his face, and his ochre eyes that had flickered with frosty fire in Marco's direction were obscured behind sunglasses (who wears sunglasses at night? Marco wondered). His hands were buried deep in the pocket at the front of his gray hoodie, and the hem of his jeans dragged under his Vans. Marco had not scoured the pages of secondhand magazines in the library for five years for nought. He could recognise Jean even if he was in a freaking bunny costume.

The one Marco didn't recognise was the short girl walking beside him, until he read the magazine article. There was a tiny gap between that hinted to their relationship being merely friends out on the town maybe for a meal or just one of those long walks Jean liked to take. She had some bizarre red haircut you wouldn't expect to see on a girl. Marco had seen it on male models in the fitness magazines he was prone to reading on his trips to the gym, but never on a girl.

He flipped the page, and read:

  " _Despite his attempts to blend in, it was easy to spot the infamous MMA pro fighter who had exploded onto the MMA scene three years ago with his unforeseen takeover of the Tennessee American MMA Shooto Championships! Jean Kirschstein, aged 26, has since then been slowly conquering the MMA scene with skills often compared to the likes of Georges St. Pierre, the "Rush". But that's not the only thing he's been conquering, as we've found out! Blessed with a mixed Western European heritage that he inherited from his shipping magnate father and ex-model mother, the good-looking fighter has not only conquered the MMA scene but hundreds of hearts! Women often cite him as their ideal man, as we find out on the streets:_

_'I love his edgy, bad-boy look.'-Martina Farrer, 22._

_'He's my ideal boyfriend.'-Klea Barton, 19._

_'He looks like a rebel, but you know you can count on him when the going gets tough!'-Sara Chainsworth, 20._

_'He's got the whole tough guy look but I can tell he's a real sweetheart.'-Lena Walters, 25."_

Here, Marco had to put down the magazine and look outside the bus window so he could breathe. He hadn't realised how much it would hurt to hear other people talking about Jean like they knew him as well as, or even better than he did. The time they had spent together in that small dormitory room had been brief by no fault of Jean's, but it was a time Marco desperately longed to return to. To undo his own undoing, and to tell himself that leaving meant losing the only thing that had really mattered to him. Taking a deep, shaky breath again, he continued to read.

  " _...Jean Kirschstein was spotted out on the streets of Las Vegas just_ _last night, together with a Japanese woman we recognised as Butterfly_ _Moriyama, founder and owner of the expanding sushi chain of the same name. Our investigation shows that Ms. Moriyama and Jean Kirschstein were mutually acquainted through Jean Kirschstein's little sister, Evangeline Kirschstein (21), and have been friends for over five years. Perhaps they have decided to cast aside their flings and move on to serious relationships? After all, there's nothing more beautiful than a relationship borne of friendship! Our sources have heard rumours of Jean considering marriage in the near future! Perhaps it is this exotic entrepreneur that Jean has settled his sights on?_

_EXTRA: Tess Callahan, Hawaiian born-and-raised office receptionist, gives her side of the story about what it's like to be Jean Kirschstein's girlfriend--"_

Here, Marco could tolerate no more. He slapped the magazine shut and tossed it on the seat beside him. His head hurt too much to think (probably because he wasn't accustomed to reading on moving vehicles) and his heart hurt too much to feel. He felt numb, and the crack that had opened up when Jean walked out on him just last night, now opened up into a crevasse that threatened to consume his entire being...

  "Trost Interchange!" the bus driver shouted, and Marco jerked awake.

He had fallen asleep, paralysed by the numbness spreading outwards from his chest cavity. It was just barely dawn now, pink skirmishing the horizon and the sun just on its heels. The normally-quiet town was still asleep, but there were graveyard shift workers on their way home, and their replacements on their way to work. It was so quiet out, and so chilly in the December morning air as he stepped off the bus.

  "Sir? You left behind your magazine."

Marco turned around to see the magazine in the bus driver's hand, and he must have looked as terrible as he felt, because the bus driver asked him if he was okay.

  "What? I'm fine. You can keep the magazine."

  "Really? Thanks. I'm a big fan of Jean Kirschstein. He gave me his autograph once, you know, because I said I was from Trost as well."

  "That's great," Marco managed to dredge up a smile from the crevasse inside him. "Have a nice day."

Jean had been holding a pen when Marco entered his backstage room. He had assumed it was fan, like this bus driver, coming to see him for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He was probably just going to shake his hand, sign a shirt and maybe take a photo together and say goodbye, then be on his way to meet his would-be fiancée for a date.

_Fiancée._

Marco choked, and had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk so he could put down his bag and try to breathe.

 _This is real,_ Marco thought wildly, not really making sense of his surroundings as he picked up his bag again and kept walking on blindly.  _This is real. This is reality. You knew this was going to happen, but you kept lying to yourself. Hoping, hoping like the idiot_   _that you are, that Jean would welcome you back in his arms. You're such an_   _idiot! No wonder Jean walked out on you. No wonder he moved on to amazing, wonderful, accomplished people like Butterfly-_ chan _. Of course he would. He's Jean Kirschstein. He's known what he was destined to achieve since the day he was born. He's never had to question who he was, or what he had to do. Everyone wants him. And he only wanted me. Just me. Fat, ugly, stupid and foolish me._

Marco felt the feelings that had been kept inside a locked box for five years spill out once more. Disbelief... indescribable joy... excitement... happiness... and bleak insecurity. All those girls who had vied for Jean's attention, which had all been on him. All those people who had stared at the two of them, in scathing confusion. He had believed he was doing the right thing, leaving Jean so the only love he'd ever known could see that all he felt was Marco was merely shallow infatuation, maybe even a fat fetish. He thought he was doing the right thing, putting in hours at the gym and skipping meals and going on painful diets just to cut down his weight to an acceptable range so people wouldn't give him a second glance when his fat butt knocked against their table and spilled their drinks when he passed. He had been convinced that he was shedding not only weight, but also years of misery, insecurity, self-loathing and gaining not only muscle, but confidence as well.

He had been so, so wrong.

Jean had loved him fully, wholly and truly. Marco had been a blind, absurd imbecile to see Jean's love as anything but.

  " _Are you sure you're doing this for you, and not some cretin who doesn't deserve you?" Nile Dok, the personal fitness trainer and boyfriend of his cousin Marie, had asked seriously. Or as seriously as someone struggling to pick up sushi with wooden chopsticks could._

_"Yes," Marco had replied without hesitation._

He was employed at the local bookstore, sorting through tomes and volumes and doing inventory checks and placing orders for new publications. It was boring work, but it had paid for Marco's gym membership and the branded clothes he had ordered online because Trost didn't have anything more glamorous than a FOREVER 21, and he was too embarrassed to be seen going in there where the lights were too bright and the girls too many, even if they did have a men's section. It hadn't paid much more than that, and this trip to Vegas alone had him dipping into his dismal savings.

But the trip had to be made. Jean had been travelling everywhere, never quite settling down in one place long enough for Marco to plan and take leave from work so he could go and see him. Last Marco had seen before news of the Vegas match had reached his ears, Jean was in Paris, spending quality time with his family. Some random fan touring Paris had snuck a shot of him on the street, walking with his arm around his equally stunning sister. If you didn't look too hard, you would have thought that they were some celebrity couple, just out for a casual day of shopping. They looked like one, dressed like one and even had the 'props' for it: bags from brands Marco had never even  _heard_ of like YSL and Burberry in Jean's free hand.

He was determined to meet Jean, now that he had built up his body and his confidence by relation. He was certain that now, no one would find fault with him for standing beside Jean as a friend, or in Marco's most daring dream, a lover.

He had even gone to the lengths of copying Jean's style, hoping it would earn him points with Jean--

_Stop it. Stop it. It's over. This is now. This is reality. Jean hates you. And why wouldn't he? You're sick, pathetic garbage. And he... he's... he's Jean. He's perfect. He's whole. He doesn't need you. A loser who can't even get his life on track or get his bank account afloat._

_This is reality,_ Marco repeated silently.  _What do I do now? What do I live for now? Everything I've been doing for the last five years... what's my purpose now?_

_"...And if you insist you have no purpose in life, then let me give you one: to be loved by me."_

But Jean didn't love him anymore. He had made that very clear that night. So now what?

He turned his key in the lock of his front door, noting in some obscure corner of his mind that he need to give it a paint job. The hinges creaked when he opened the door; he'd have to oil them.

As he walked through his threadbare, tiny apartment, he made a mental list of things he had to do. Fix the dripping tap, or his utility bill would cost more. Put away the laundry. Do the next load. Sweep and mop the house. Go grocery shopping, because there was nothing left except half an onion bulb in the fridge and some Captain Crunch crumbs in the pantry. The list went on, and on.

Marco went into the bathroom, and picked up the the shaving razor instead.

* * *

 

  "...I can't believe you guys sold me out for $100," Jean grumbled, legs crossed and reclining on the private plane headed for London. His dad had called him over to meet the board of directors for his company so he could prepare his heir for Jean's succession.

  "Would you like a drink, Mr. Kirschstein?" a perky-looking black-haired air stewardess smiled at him, bending low so Jean would have exclusive view of her cleavage.

  "Just get me a gin and tonic," Jean told her, and returned to his call with Bertholdt and Reiner.

  "Don't blame me," Reiner's voice was slightly scratchy because of the poor connection, but when you were thousands of feet above sea level, there was nothing you could do about it. "Bertholdt was too nervous to refuse the journalist and I wasn't there to take control of the situation."

  "I'm really sorry," Bertholdt apologised for the millionth time since Jean had made the call and they picked up. From the way Reiner had been panting when he answered, Jean quickly assumed they'd been having sex. Part of him wanted to not be a bother and let them get on with it, but with the glaring headlines and misconceived notion that Jean was getting married soon in his hands... Jean could care less about being a bother.

  "Never mind, Bertl," Jean sighed. He rubbed his face with his free hand. The catch of his TagHeuer clipped the cut on his chin where he had nicked himself this morning when Evangeline burst into the toilet, violating his decency (he had been naked except for a skinny towel wrapped around his waist) and startling him into slicing himself a new one with the hotel shaver. Like he didn't already have enough bodily wounds from the previous night's match. But then she started waving a magazine in his face, one that had been delivered along with the day's newspaper (which had more important things to publish than Jean's sex life).

  "Do you want the money?" Bertholdt said querulously, trying to make amends.

Jean had to smile. The couple had been travelling to New York, then Germany, then Paris on Reiner's wages as a university coach and Bertholdt's salary as an office drone. They needed it more than he did. "It's alright. You guys can keep it. I'm more upset at Tess anyway."

  "What did your sister call her? Pufferfish?"

  " _Pouffiasse."_

  "That's the one. I must admit, your sister has a knack for recognizing them when she sees them."

  "Yeah, it's just great," Jean rolled his eyes, remembering how gleefully Evangeline had gloated over her correct character judgement in the hotel room earlier this morning.

  "Well, my erection is getting more and more painful by the minute," Reiner announced, and Bertholdt made some muffled protest in the background. "I'm going to hang up so I can fuck Bertholdt brainless. Bye!"

  "Spare me the details," Jean shuddered, and hung up at the same time. As he put down the international call phone, his leg knocked over the paper bag that he had put on the floor.

He had received it that night, when he came back to the hotel from dinner with Butterfly- _chan_. The concierge woman, some blonde who looked like she just popped right out of a fucking toothpaste advertisement, had passed it to him with the reassurance from the giver himself that it wasn't going to explode in his face. He had taken it up to his room, and looked inside.

It was the hoodie Jean thought he'd lost in his black hole of a closet, back in the university dormitory. When he moved out and couldn't find it, he simply assumed he'd lost it somewhere else, or maybe his mother had taken it without telling him and given it to charity like she often did.

Marco had taken it with him. He felt his heart thud erratically in his chest as he thought about _why_ he had taken it, and Butterfly- _chan_ _'s_ words from earlier that evening now came back to haunt him.

  " _Marco loves you. He loves you more than you think, but he's just really misguided. And insecure."_

  "... _All I know is, you made a mistake by letting him go."_

Jean now stared at the paper bag, with the hoodie still stuffed inside, and felt his heart ache, a sensation he hadn't felt in years.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOPE YOU LIKED IT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I'm such a shit. By the way, tumblr now has a tag for this fic, so if you want to post anything about this fic, you can tag it as #ifris! And yes I'm an unimaginative loser so I made it the acronym of this fic's name.


	15. And Never Will Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does Jean truly not love Marco anymore? Is that it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I won't be able to upload any chapters tomorrow morning so I rushed this part. Sorry! I'll edit it if need be and if there are any medical errors and whatnot.  
> TRIGGER WARNING: mention of a suicide attempt. Yes, that is what happened to baby Marco.

Trafalgar Square was teeming with tourists and locals alike, but Jean didn't know which category he belonged to. He wasn't a local, because he didn't have a British passport. But he wasn't a tourist either, since he had taken up residence in a penthouse at the Ritz.

It was opulent, luxurious and an expensive waste of money. As a result, Jean preferred to spend his time outside it, like here in a café near Trafalgar square. It was the dead of winter, but that didn't seem to bother Jean even though he was wearing only the maroon sweater his sister had picked up at YSL, woollen pants and Burberry trench coat. His neck and hands were unprotected from the frigid wind and quickly turning pink, since he had given his Harvey Nichols kid gloves and scarf set to some homeless man squatting outside Charing Cross Station.

The laptop demanded his attention once more with a  _ping._ Sighing, he gave it what it wanted, and opened the e-mail from his father. _  
_

_Have you analysed the financial statements I sent you yesterday?_

He quickly typed his answer before his father kicked up a fuss about his tardiness: _It came in when I was sleeping. It's just past nine in the morning. I'm looking at it now._

His father had flown off to somewhere in Asia. Indonesia or India or something like that, and paid no heed to time zone differences. The man worked like a robot, efficiently, effectively and was probably immune to jet lag, unlike Jean. He was still getting used to the 8 hours difference, and compensating with more coffee than was probably healthy. This was his fourth cup of espresso, but he still felt like he should be going to bed right about now.

The LaRue Shipping (it had originally been named Kirschstein Shipping, but his father was a romantic even if he didn't seem like one and had changed it in honour of Camille LaRue saying yes to his proposal) Statement of Financial Position put numbers somewhere in the billions, so it had been no wonder his father could afford to put his son up in a Ritz penthouse. However, while the pixels on his screen had afforded his residence, it wasn't making any sense to Jean. All those years in Business school at a local university had been wasted on someone who should have gone to an Ivy League, his father used to say, and still did.

If Jean had gone to an Ivy League... if Jean had gone to an Ivy League school like Dartmouth or Penn U, things would definitely have turned out differently. But for better or for worse... Jean couldn't say. But as Butterfly- _chan_ said in what felt like another lifetime now that he was here, sitting serenely at a café in Trafalgar Square, watching tourists feed pigeons and locals stay wiser than to do that: " _what was, is, and always will be_ ".

The wind picked up once more, and nipped at his exposed skin and tugged playfully at his hair. He needed another haircut; it was getting shaggy and ticking his eyelids when he blinked.

The laptop  _ping-_ ed again, and Jean blew a raspberry in frustration.  _Cut me some slack--_

It was from Reiner, and the subject header was all caps:  _URGENT SHIT YOU MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD_

Brows knitted together, he opened the e-mail. He had made the terrible mistake of picking up his white porcelain espresso cup to take a sip when he started reading. By the time he finished scanning the e-mail, its contents were warming a spot on the crotch of his Brioni pants.

* * *

 

White.

That was all he could register as he peeled his eyelids open. _So heaven_ is  _a vision of white, like people say. I wonder how they knew, seeing as they're not as dead as I am._

 "Marco?"

_Wow, the angels even sound like Mom. But why do they sound so sad? Shouldn't there be trumpet fanfare and not... what is that noise?_

Slowly, because it surprisingly hurt to twitch even a muscle, Marco turned his head.  _Oh. I'm not dead after all._

The noise he'd been hearing was the ECG, tracking his heart rate with a steady  _beep beep beep_ that he was starting to find irritating. He was hooked up to a few different machines, lying on a gurney and there was an IV drip feeding into his arm when he was very uncomfortable with needles. He had trypanophobia, and having an IV drip needle sunk millimetres under his skin wasn't helping.

The beeping noise got louder and more frequent.

  "Marco, what's the matter?" his mother appeared, eyes pink and puffy and looking like she hadn't slept in...  _wait, how long have I been here?_

  "Mom?" he croaked. "What... where am I?"

  "You don't remember anything, honey?" she stroked his cheek with a hand aged by years of working as a homemaker and mother of four, and as a high school grad waitress in a diner for years before Marco's father asked her out and then married her.

  "Not really...?" It was mostly true. All he remembered was coming home from Vegas (that sounded like a Katy Perry song he once jogged along to) and thinking of all the things he had to do... then he was sitting on the bathroom floor with a razor blade he'd plucked out of his shaver, and there was a sticky, crimson substance on the floor. He remembered wondering if it would come out of the white tiles without leaving a stain behind if he used Clorox. Then he recalled that he didn't have anymore Clorox and after that...

  "Well," his mother was trying to sound strong, but falling terribly short. Marco felt horribly guilty for the tear streaks on his mother's aged face. "You're okay now. That's all that matters."

_...all that matters._

Marco felt a shudder run through him as the memories of the events leading up to his last memories came flooding back. He felt like he was 21 again, waking up in his dormitory room with the curtains drawn and wearing clothes he didn't remember wearing and Jean talking to his computer.

Jean.  _Jean._

 "Marco? Honey? Baby, what's wrong?" his mother panicked now, and dabbed at his face.

He was crying, and he didn't even realise it. "Oh.  _Oh._ "

  "Does something hurt? Do you want me to call the nurse? I'll go call the nurse now," and she stood up but Marco quickly grabbed the hem of her cardigan.

  "Mom, I'm fine, I'm fine, I-I just--" he stammered, hastily scrubbing the tears away.

  "Are you sure? Absolutely sure?" she worried. "Nothing hurts?"

  "Nothing hurts," he assured her.  _Except maybe my heart, but there's no cure for that, is there? Except maybe a playlist of all the million songs that cover a broken heart and a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream._

 "Do you want any water?" she grabbed the jug like she only just remembered it was there. It sloshed around and splattered Marco's blanket. He belatedly remembered he was wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital nightgown underneath it.  _Déjà vu much?_

  "Ma'am?" a young nurse popped her head around the door. "Visiting hours are-- oh! You're awake! I'll go fetch the doctor!"

Before Marco could voice his protest, she vanished. He exchanged a helpless look with his mother, and within moments, the nurse was back with a doctor who probably hadn't slept in the last 24 hours and had been hoping to go home now that his shift was just over.

  "I'm so sorry about this," Marco apologised profusely.

  "Finally, a patient that apologises for being a patient," the doctor, who was barely out of his twenties, rolled his eyes and sighed. "It's a refreshing change. Don't worry, you're my  _last--"_ he shot the nurse a dirty look "--patient for this shift. I haven't slept in the last 28 hours."

  "You must be dead on your feet," Marco marvelled as the doctor checked his stats.

  "Perks of the job," the doctor sighed. "You feel any discomfort, any dizziness...?"

  "No," Marco hoped he looked convincing.

  "You sure?" the doctor arched an eyebrow, noticing the tears on Marco's face. That one simple move threatened to be his undoing.

  "Mmhmm," Marco nodded vigorously, knowing that if he opened his mouth now, he would sound like a dying cat. The tears were stinging his eyes already. The doctor, thankfully, decided Marco was okay and left with the nurse. They were bickering as they went down the corridor, their voices growing fainter and fainter as they put more distance between themselves and Marco.

  "You'll be okay alone?" Marco's mother smoothed the hair out of his face. "Look at you. Not coming home for two Thanksgivings and two Christmases. You've lost so much weight. Why?"

  "Don't wanna talk about it," Marco managed to say without turning into an ugly mess.

  "Alright," she left it at that and giving him a kiss on his forehead like she used to do when he was young and she tucked him into bed. "See you tomorrow at visiting hours."

He nodded, and the moment she was out of sight, he let the tears fall.

  "This is what you're reduced to? Pathetic."

He jerked his head up and his breath caught in his throat. "J-Jean?"

The same lithe, graceful build, and that striking two-toned undercut. He stood at the foot of Marco's bed, wearing the outfit Marco had tried to copy, and he carried it off with more suavity that Marco could ever hope to match. His pale amber eyes flashed, and his mouth was stubbornly set in a grimace.

  "You don't even have the  _right_ to call me that," Jean hissed. Marco flinched. "So this is what you do, huh? When you run away, tail between your legs. You take the easy way out. But I guess that's always been the way with you. You never think about how that makes other people feel. How it made  _me_ feel. That must mean I never mattered--"

  "That's not true," Marco blurted out. "You mattered. You mattered so much. That's why I left. I wanted to be better for--"

  "Me?" Jean arched his eyebrow like that young doctor had mere seconds ago. "You wanted to be better for me? Or did you want to be better for you?"

Marco froze, not because of the icy fire in Jean's voice and face, but because he didn't have an answer for that.

  "I hate you," Jean spat viciously. "You're a pitiful, wretched piece of trash. I wish I'd never met you."

Each word sliced deeper and deeper into Marco's chest, and stabbed harder and harder at his heart. It now physically hurt to breathe, and he had to gasp for air.

Jean moved towards him, and Marco cowered because of the dangerous glint in his eye. Once upon a time, that glint had been mischievous where Marco was concerned. It had been playful, not threatening violence.

The freckled man recoiled when Jean put out a hand and ran it down his cheek the same way his mother had.

  "And I wish you had never been born," Jean whispered so sweetly. "That would be so much better for all of us now, wouldn't it?"

Marco began to cry silently, and when the same nurse passed by, she wondered why she had heard him talking, since it was way past visiting hours and nobody could possibly be in his room.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: more angst. That is all I can say.


	16. Far Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco has attempted to commit suicide and Jean is unexpectedly devastated by the turn of events... didn't he have 'closure'?

Jean had always hated hospitals. The stark whiteness, the glaring fluorescent lights, the stinging smell of antiseptic, the squeak of un-oiled gurney wheels being pushed to their maximum in a bid to save a life. It burned at four of his five senses, and he would have felt intensely uncomfortable if not for the fact that he was in no state to pay all these things any heed. The vulcanised rubber soles of his Supergas skidded against the linoleum floor as he sprinted up to the front desk.

  "Marco Bodt," Jean panted, eyes bloodshot from the stress of boarding a last minute red-eye flight from Heathrow and not sleeping a wink during those 11 hours.

  "Hey, I know you... you're that MMA--"

  "Where is his room?" Jean snapped, in no mood to play gracious celebrity.

  "Sheesh," the woman muttered. "No need to be rude. I just wanted to get your autograph. My kid--"

  "His room." his voice brooked no room for further delay, and his expression was downright threatening. The woman quickly gave it to him, and grumbled after he had bolted in the direction of the given room.

He pulled up short outside of room 3089, partly to catch his breath and partly because Bertholdt and Reiner were sitting outside it, their expressions utterly sombre.

  "Is he okay?" Jean gasped, trying to breathe and speak at the same time. "Is Marco okay? Fucking hell, Reiner! Why wouldn't you tell me anything when I--"

  "He's alive," Reiner said stonily, his arms folded across his muscular chest. His biceps doubled in size when he did that, and it made him twice as intimidating. "He's awake."

  "Then--"

  "He's with his mother now," Bertholdt told him softly. "He doesn't want to see us."

  "What--"

  "This is all your fucking fault, Kirschstein!" Reiner lurched to his feet, sending the plastic chair toppling over and clattering against the floor. He marched up to Jean so fast he didn't have a chance to react before the more muscular blonde grabbed him by his collar and jerked him. Reiner's vivid gold eyes were practically ablaze with vicious fury and his jaw muscles flickered under the taut skin. "Why the fucking fuck do you think Marco tried to kill himself, huh? You fucking  _idiot!"_

Jean was helpless to defend himself against Reiner's rage, not just because Reiner's grip on his collar was immovable, but also because he knew Reiner was right.

  "He doesn't want to see us," Reiner hissed. "Because we remind him of  _you_. The minute we walked in, Marco actually turned  _white_ and he started to panic. He started spouting some shit about you hating him and that he was sorry and what the fuck exactly did you say to him that night in Vegas when he went to see you?"

  "I... I told him I never wanted to see him again," Jean whispered, the full weight of the situation falling squarely on his chest and crushing him. He didn't know how he had the breath to speak, much less stay conscious. "I walked out on him."

  "I knew you were a jackass," Reiner threw him down, and Jean stumbled to regain his balance and stay on his feet. The brawnier blonde turned his back on him. "But I thought you were better than that. Why the fuck didn't you try to talk to him, or at least get his side of the story?"

  "Because I didn't think it mattered," Jean's voice was barely above a murmur. He looked dazed and utterly stunned. "I didn't think it was worth listening to after what I'd been through."

  "And now," Reiner stalked back to him and shoved him so hard he staggered backwards a couple of steps. "Marco is sitting in a fucking hospital, with a fuckdamned IV drip attached to him, trying not to cry because he keeps seeing you in his hospital room when you're not there and hearing you tell him all kinds of fucked up shit. Great job, asshole, considering while he was bleeding out on the floor his bathroom for almost seven hours until they found him, you were getting comfy on a fancy jet to Europe. Just fucking fantastic."

  "Not to forget the fact that he would have died of blood loss if his colleague hadn't thought to drop in on him and check if he was okay, since he wasn't answering his phone when they called him about missing work," Reiner continued. "But now his right arm is paralysed from the shoulder down, and he can't even go a full hour without starting to cry about something that reminds him of you. Are you fucking proud of yourself now, Kirschstein?"

Jean's eyes had gone wide, and coupled with the effects of having stayed awake for nearly the last eighteen hours and the burden of the truth behind the whole situation now, he had gone very, very pale. Even his lips were bloodless. Reiner, furious though he was, could not avoid noticing how shell-shocked he was. He closed his eyes and sighed, remembering that Jean had not intended for this to happen, and while he  _had_ been responsible for the entire ordeal occurring in the first place, he did not have the intention of instigating it.

  "I wouldn't advise you to go in and see him now," Bertholdt said timidly. "His mother was mad enough at us for making him go into a panic attack."

  "We'll distract her," Reiner offered with unexpected acquiescence. "Get her down to the cafeteria for some coffee and whatnot. Poor lady's been by his side all day since the start of visiting hours. She could probably use it."

Jean sucked in a breath, and felt the turmoil of emotions bubbling up inside him. "Thanks, guys" was all he could manage to say coherently.

The couple went inside, and Jean's heart shredded itself when he hear Marco's frightened whimper at the sight of the pair.

 _Why,_ Jean banged the back of his head against the wall he leaned against.  _Why did I let you go? No, why did I leave you behind? Marco... oh, God._

Bertholdt and Reiner practically strong-armed Marco's mother out of the room, ignoring her quiet protests. Seizing the window of opportunity that had been opened by the pair, he slipped into the room.

His heart jumped into his throat, and for the first time in many years, he felt like crying.

Marco lay on a gurney, IV drip feeding into his arm ( _he has trypanophobia,_ Jean remembered.  _I'm surprised he's okay with that thing under his skin_ ) and eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. Tear marks streaked down his pale, freckled cheeks. He no longer looked like the ideal picture of health Jean had met merely days ago in Nevada; whatever muscles he possessed were now slack and fast disappearing, giving him a hollowed, deathly look. His eyes had sunken slightly and his lips were now turned downwards at the corners.

Marco's dark eyes, which Jean had once described as the eyes of the doe, flickered down to look at Jean, standing at the foot of his bed. The blonde was startled by how lifeless they were. Marco didn't seem surprised to see Jean at all, but filled with dread and misery instead as they squeezed shut and a tear rolled out from under one eyelid.

  "Please," Marco breathed hoarsely. "Just... stop. Leave me alone."

  "Marco--"

  "No!" Marco suddenly began sobbing hysterically. "I know, okay? I know I'm pathetic, and disgusting, and a waste of space. I know you hate me. I know... so please... just leave me alone.

  "I don't--"

  "Stop it!" Marco's eyes flew open, and Jean's heart wrenched to see exactly  _how_ frightened Marco was. How frightened he was... of Jean himself.

Jean, desperate, tried to approach Marco, but the freckled man just began to cry in earnest now. His eyes were reddening as he began to shed tears from ducts dried from hours of weeping. When Jean tried to make him listen, Marco started to howl.

  " _No!"_ Marco shouted, voice breaking as he pitched it louder, ripping Jean's heart into tinier pieces. " _Just leave me alone. This isn't real! You're not real! You're not here! Leave me alone!"_

He was so startled by Marco's frantic outburst that he didn't hear the sound of approaching, hurried footsteps.

  "Marco!" his mother hurtled into the room. She registered Marco, wailing and crying, and Jean, staring at him in horrified shock.

  "What did you do to my son?" she hissed, rushing forward to grab Jean's arm with a thin yet fearsomely strong grip. " _What did you do to him?"_

  "I-I didn't--"

  " _Leave me alone,"_ Marco's voice, raw from screaming, dropped to a broken whisper. He didn't see his mother, didn't see Jean. He stared blankly into his lap, and began rocking, tears still trickling down his face. " _Please. I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."_

  "I never want you anywhere near my son again," Mrs. Bodt dragged Jean out of the room with more strength than she looked capable of. "If I see you coming within five feet of him, I'll file for a restraining order against you. Do you hear me?"

  "I-I... I'm so sorry," Jean was petrified by what had just unfolded in front of his eyes, that he could barely piece together a proper sentence. "I... I understand."

  "Good." she bared her teeth at him; a small, aged housewife at a seasoned MMA pro fighter. She turned on her heel and quickly made soothing noises, trying to calm her son down.

Jean stood there in the hallway outside Marco's room, feeling like his heart was lying at his feet in a pile of dust.

  "I guess that didn't work out so well, huh?" Reiner sighed, seeing Jean standing outside the room.

  "He... he looked at me like I was some kind of... monster," Jean whispered, shocked. "Like I was a ghost or something."

  "My guess is that Marco has been having hallucinations," Bertholdt offered. "He's been hallucinating that you're here, in his room, and that you're saying all kinds of terrible things about you. But he doesn't know that it's his own subconscious talking to him, and throwing his own thoughts back in his face. So when he saw you just now..."

  "He doesn't know it's the real me," Jean caught on quickly.

  "Yes."

  "But how do I...?" Jean ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "I can't get close to Marco without having a lawsuit thrown at me. And even if I could..."

  "There's nothing you can do right now, to be honest," Reiner shrugged when Jean gaped at him. "I'm serious. I've seen kids who are too traumatised from too many blows, and they can never get back into the ring because their subconscious keeps telling them they can't survive in there. So they never try again, and they drop the sport altogether and take up some sissy hobby like gardening--"

Bertholdt coughed deliberately and elbowed his partner in the ribs. "Stop ranting about Gregory. The kid was comatose for sixteen hours. He's entitled."

  "My point is," Reiner nodded. "You'll just have to wait until his mind heals. There's no shortcuts, no two ways about it. The more you try to force yourself on him now, the more you'll hurt him and make the scars even worse."

Jean staggered back against the wall, and sank down to collapse on the floor. "So you're telling me... you're telling me that when he's right there, right behind this wall, and the only thing I want most in the world is for him to be in my arms again... and the only thing he wants in the world is to never see me again?"

It was five years ago all over again, except this time, Marco wasn't leaving. Marco was right here, not ten yards away from Jean, bound to a bed by mistakes Jean had made him commit.

* * *

 

  "So let me get this straight," Evangeline's brows drew together in concentration. Jean appreciated her rare moment of seriousness, especially now of all times when she held the most precious thing in Jean's world now in her hands. "You want me to give this to your ex-boyfriend--"

  "No ex," Jean interjected, and avoided looking at his little sister's arched eyebrow. "Continue."

  "--when I judge that he's okay enough to not go jumping off a building when your name is mentioned?"

  "Sounds about right," he winced at her choice of examples, but couldn't deny it was pretty accurate.

  "Why me?" Evangeline scowled. "That means I have be stuck in this crappy, lame town for the next--"

  "You're on university break for the next few months," Jean reminded her. "You don't have anything better to do than surf the net for lame jokes on Tumblr--" "Hey! They're not lame! You laugh at them sometimes, too." "--and I thought you liked it here, anyway."

  "I was sixteen," Evangeline gave him a dirty look. "I had a mild obsession with quaint, remote small towns in the middle of freaking nowhere."

  "Wasn't all that long ago," Jean kissed her forehead and ruffled her hair. "Thank you, _ma jolie_ _._ This means a lot to me."

  " _Tu vas m’en devoir une_ ," she muttered, hugging her brother.

  " _T_ _u pourras demander paiement lorsque tu auras terminé ta tâche,"_ he rubbed her back like he used to when she was little and soothing a tantrum of hers.

  " _Last boarding call for flight AF6692 to Paris, France_ ," the PA system announced.

  "That's my flight," he said gently. "Watch over him for me, alright?"

  "I will," her pale amber eyes, a copy of his, softened. " _Bon voyage, grand frère._ "

He gave her one last wave, gaze catching on the white rectangle in her hands, and left.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH I WANT THEM TO JUST FUCKING KISS AND MAKE OUT AND HAVE SEX ALREADY BUT NOOOOO PLOTLINE AND SHIET UGH KILL ME NOW WILL YOU TWO JUST FUCKNG FUCK ALREADY
> 
> (EDIT: and KUDOS TO MIZERA FOR HELPING ME WITH MY NONEXISTENT FRENCH AND FUCK YOU GOOGLE TRANSLATE YOU USELESS PIECE OF CRAP)


	17. Can We Start Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4 months isn't as long as Jean feels like it is.

April was always the month of beginnings: the beginning of new life, sprouting from branches and the ground alike with tongues and spikes of green. The beginning of warm new life, after months of bitter cold. Of course, there was the occasional but expected spring shower, and the chilly evenings. But no one begrudged Spring her whimsies when she swept out the snow and brought in the freshness and beauty of budding flowers. It was only a shame she couldn't give the same new beginnings or second chances at life to Jean.

Jean Kirschstein had pulled out of the MMA scene entirely for the last few months, a decision that had shocked the MMA world since he had "such promise and such talent". He instead chose to brush up his long-forgotten business skills by reading the thick tomes on Economics and Financial Management in his father's well-stocked study, spending his days going over financial statements, sales decisions, notes from the unexpectedly helpful board of directors, and going on runs like the ones he was on now.

His New Balance soles pounded the sidewalk as he weaved past pedestrians, keeping his breathing even as he finished his last mile back to the family apartment. His mother and father were now on a cruise around the Caribbean or Mediterranean or something like that, his father celebrating the anticipated retirement now that his heir had fully immersed himself in preparations for his inheritance. His little sister had been sending him e-mails everyday about Marco and his recovery for about a month after he'd left, then she stopped entirely without any warning or explanation. He had sent her several e-mails, asking why she had stopped. Even his calls rarely went through, and when they did, she was always in a hurry to hang up, saying that she was busy with forgotten break assignments from her university. She had sounded genuinely flustered and harried, so he left it at that. But every night before he went to bed, he still made sure to send out an e-mail to her, asking her to update him on Marco's progress. The last e-mail he had received regarding that particular issue had been bleak; Marco was still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and he could barely stand to be around anyone besides his own mother.

He quickened his pace, determined to forget the bludgeoning that e-mail had done to his heart, at least for the rest of this run before he crashed into some unwitting, innocent pedestrian who hadn't cornered someone and circumstantially forced him into trying to commit suicide, unlike himself. Perhaps this was what he deserved, after all. This was the price he had to pay for hurting someone who was already so deeply wounded. Spending his days looking at numbers, and trying not to wonder about a certain freckled man about 5,000 miles away. Trying not to think about what could have happened to him.

His thigh muscles were burning from the bite of lactic acid produced after running for a solid 6 miles and a little over, and sweat stung his eyes. His overgrown mop of hair had been pulled back into a tiny ponytail to keep it out of his face as he ran. His breathing was deep pants regulated with years of training, and he was determined to finish strong.

But a mere four blocks away from his apartment, he slowed to a stop and could only stare.

A heartrendingly familiar form was sitting on the front steps of his apartment building, shoulders hunched forward in embarrassment as passer-bys gave him disdainful looks, mistaking him for a squatter. He was wearing a flimsy fleece jacket that had probably come out of a sales bin, and non-designer jeans with an unflattering cut. His shoes were scuffed trainers and he was scuffing them now, rubbing the toe of one shoe against the other. There was a ratty, beat-up duffel bag at his feet, and judging from how baggy it was, there probably wasn't very many things inside. Then he shivered, as a brisk spring breeze picked up, clutching the thin jacket tighter around himself.

He looked so totally out of place, among locals wearing fancy clothes from luxury designer brands and tourists wearing sturdy travel wear from recognised brands. But he didn't seem to notice his awkward predicament, and Jean's heart twisted and yearned and loved.

Oh, how he loved.

This man with his simple, lazy hairstyle parted down the middle, because he habitually ran his hand through his hair like he was doing now. With his freckles speckling his face like the shell of a newly-laid egg, and his sweet button nose that had been nipped an adorable pink by the chilly spring winds. With his lovely, dark doe eyes that now watched Jean as the blonde slowly approached him, perspiring and panting and unable to believe that this man was really here.

Jean's hand unconsciously reached out to touch this freckled man's face, which had filled out just slightly from the last time Jean had met him. He flinched, and Jean quickly retracted his hand. But then this man, who made Jean's heart wish and wonder and crave for more like it had some six years ago, did something that broke the last seal on all of Jean's repressed emotions of these six years.

Marco Bodt firmly took Jean's hand in his and pressed it to his cheek, and nuzzled Jean's palm as his eyes fluttered shut to fully savour the feel of Jean's touch.

  "Marco--" Jean's voice cracked and all the tears he had been unable to shed for six years to this day began to fill his eyes. He felt his knees grow weak, and he went down on them in front of this man who had, as a boy, stolen his heart and refused to give it back, leaving him incapable of feeling. Then he had returned that lost item to its rightful owner, and Jean began to feel once again.

And he felt.

He felt Marco's soft, warm cheek in his palm, and felt the vibrancy and strong pulse that was Marco's life under his fingers. He felt Marco's silky dark hair tickle the back of his hand. He felt Marco's hot tears sliding down his freckled cheek, a reminder that he wasn't the only one who felt.

  "Marco," Jean said, voice still clogged with tears that now trickled down his own face. He used his other hand to frame Marco's face. "Marco.  _Mon chéri.. mon amour."_

Marco's voice was shaky with tears of his own, but he was laughing. "You forgot one more."

  "One more?" Jean's brow wrinkled, and when Marco's face faltered ever so slightly. Then he grinned playfully and Marco swatted his arm, realising the joke was on him. "You mean this one?"

He leaned forward cautiously, gauging Marco's reaction to see if he would let him... if he would let him try again. His nose brushed against Marco's, a sweet and nostalgic move that he had once done to the boy with the same freckles and doe eyes, except it had been on a bed in a small dormitory room rather than the granite steps of an apartment block in Paris. Marco's breath was warm on his dry lips, and his beautiful, soulful dark eyes gazed into Jean's searching pale amber ones in absolute trust now. He angled his head and kissed Marco.

It was like coming home. God, it was like coming home after a six year journey.

He kissed harder, greedier, and demanded more. His tongue flicked against Marco's lips, and gently pried them open so they could dance once more with Marco's tongue. He danced, suckled and still, demanded more.

  "J-Jean," Marco gasped when they finally pulled apart to breathe. "People are staring."

And indeed they were. Pedestrians and passer-bys had stopped to stare at them, a gay couple making out in the open. One of them in sweat-stained jogging attire, the other one in frumpy clothing. The elder ones looked disgusted by this display, but some of the younger set had taken out their phones to take pictures. A few of them were beginning to recognise Jean, despite his odd ponytail.

  "I'd say screw them," Jean lazily flipped them a middle finger, and they quickly averted their eyes and continued walking on their way. He looked back at Marco, eyes burning brighter than the sun. "But I really, really want to screw you. Just you."

Marco blushed a bright scarlet.

  "Strawberry," Jean teased. And he kissed him again. "Come on. Before I screw your brains out right here on the front steps of my house."

He grabbed Marco's duffel bag and dragged the freckled man inside, leading him up the winding stairwell and unlocking the door as quickly as he could. He threw aside the duffel bag, slammed the door shut, then slammed Marco up against it. He pinned Marco to the lacquered walnut door, held him at arm's length, and narrowed his eyes.

  "Do you have something you want to say to me?" Jean clipped, his voice now calm and emotionless. A complete 180 from his passionate display of affection on the front steps. Marco swallowed visibly, and that same, horrific fear Jean had witnessed in that hospital room four months ago began to creep into his eyes as he watched Jean's jaw muscle twitch.

  "I'm sorry," Marco whispered. "I am so, so sorry. I'll do anything you want. Just don't throw me away again. I'll get fat again--"

Jean's hand clapped over Marco's mouth, and his expression turned wry. "You know, that wasn't what I wanted to hear."

Then he slowly lifted his hand. "Try again."

Marco just stared at him, wide-eyed and uncertain. He was beginning to panic, Jean noticed, and decided to end this sweet, dear man's misery.

  "I wanted you to tell me you love me," Jean knocked his forehead against Marco's, the curve of his lips turning gentle. "I wanted you to say that you were willing to let me try again."

  "But that's not--"

  "Marco," Jean said quietly, but firmly. "That is all I want to hear from you. No more apologies, no more regrets, nothing. Just say it."

Marco's eyes filled up with tears again, and Jean laughed softly before he kissed him again. This one was light and chaste. "Say it. Come on,  _mon cœur."_

Marco hiccuped, and then started to cry in full force.

  "What?" Now completely confused and flustered by this turn of events, Jean hastened to wipe away his tears. "What is it? Marco,  _mon bébé,_ sweetheart... talk to me. Please." _  
_

"You said it," Marco gasped between sobs. "You said it."

  "What did I say?" Jean was utterly bewildered. "I take it ba--"

  " _No!"_ Marco said emphatically. "No. Say it again."

  "Say what?"

  "That French endearment," Marco whispered against Jean's shoulder, against which the blonde had pressed his face to in an embrace meant to comfort.

  " _Mon cœur?"_ Jean was startled.

  "Yes! That one," Marco nuzzled into Jean's sweat-soaked sweatshirt. "Say it again."

  " _Mon cœur_ ," Jean murmured into the freckled man's ear, making him shiver. "This isn't a very fair trade, you know."

Marco grinned against his shoulder, then pulled away. He held Jean's face in his hands, thumbs tracing the blonde's sharp cheekbones lovingly and tenderly. "Jean Kirschstein, I love you. I love you so much, I feel like--"

  "Okay," Jean abruptly swept Marco's legs out from under him and picked him up in his arms, bridal style. "That seals the deal."

  "Wait, what?" Marco struggled in Jean's arms, startled. "Jean, put me down! Where are you--"

The blonde unceremoniously tossed him on the king-sized bed in an equally luxurious room, and a wicked grin spread across his face. "Remember what I said just now outside?"

Marco did indeed remember, and the blood rushed to his face.

  "You're doing it again," Jean crawled forward on his hands and knees on the bed towards Marco, and kissed his nose. "Strawberry, how I've missed you."

  "Jean, wait--"

  "Nope, not waiting," Jean's skilful hands made quick work of Marco's clothes, and within seconds they were tossed aside.

  "But this is--"

  "What I have been wanting to do to you since the day I first realised how much I loved you," Jean said softly, marvelling at Marco's naked body. He was so damned beautiful. He had lost that trim waistline of his, and was beginning to gain weight, and had that healthy glow. There were freckles every-fucking-where. He wanted to play connect the dots with them. But that would have to wait.

His gaze trailed lower, and if possible, his grin got even wider.

  "Jean," Marco squirmed and tried to hide himself, but Jean wasn't having any of that. He grabbed Marco's thighs, and pinned them where they were. "Jean! This is really important--"

  "Not as important as this," Jean indicated his own erection, straining against his thin cotton pants.

Marco's blush intensified. Now that he thought about it, this was the first time he had ever seen Jean erect. The effect of it was humiliating; his lower member slowly hardened.

  "And apparently yours too," Jean laughed.

  "But I have to--"

  "Let me pleasure you," and Jean silenced any further protests. Any more noises that came out of Marco's mouth in the next two hours were either breathless gasps, mewls or moans, and once, at the height of it all, Jean's name.

* * *

 

Now thoroughly satisfied that he had gotten his way as he had wanted five years ago, he played connect-the-dots on Marco's chest. It rose and fell rhythmically, as the freckled man (Jean was seriously concerned about the number of freckles. Marco must be a mutant to have this many freckles) slept in post-coital slumber.

Jean found constellations of faces, words, random shapes on Marco's upper torso alone, and chuckled.

The dark-haired man's head was resting in the crook between Jean's neck and shoulder, and the blonde's chuckle jostled him awake.

  "Jean?" was Marco's sleepy query.

  "Yes,  _chéri,_ " Jean kissed his nose. It simply demanded affection, so Jean willingly obliged. "Do you hurt anywhere?"

Marco grimaced. "I would have thought that for a Casanova, you would have a lot more skill in bed. My hips are sore."

Jean was genuinely offended by the mar on his reputation. "I'll have you know I am reputed to be--"

Marco just raised an eyebrow, a move he had obviously learned from those around him.

  "I'm sorry," Jean's tone turned imminently contrite. "I'll be more gentle next time."

  "I'm just kidding," Marco threw his arms around Jean's neck and chuckled. "It was amazing.  _You_ were amazing."

  "The stuff of dreams?"

  "Don't push it."

Jean sat up in bed and glanced over at the clock. It was nearly noon now, and he'd only had a light breakfast before he went for a run. "How do you feel about lunch in bed?"

  "It sounds more amazing than you in bed."

Surprised by this newfound cheekiness (and that he liked it), Jean nibbled at Marco's collarbone in retaliation. The freckled man had to beg for mercy between peals of laughter before Jean was satisfied that he was adequately repentant and strode towards the kitchen buck-ass naked.

  "Oh, no!"

Jean spun around to find Marco panicking, stumbling out of bed to root through his duffel bag.

  "Marco? What is it?"

  "This is all your fault," Marco accused, and Jean was taken aback.

  "What?"

He purposely ignored Jean, and dug out a cellphone. He pressed speed dial 1, and closed his eyes in silent prayer. Whoever he was calling picked up, because Marco began to apologise profusely.

The person on the end was complaining, loudly. And the voice was ridiculously, and exasperatingly, familiar.

  "Is that  _Evangeline_?" Jean stared at his boyfriend, jaw on the ground.

  "She wants to talk to you," Marco held out the phone to him, his expression half-apologtic, half-rueful.

Jean scowled at the phone, but took it anyway.

  "I wanted Marco to call me as soon as he met up with you, you  _salaud!_ " Evangeline practically yelled in his ear.

  "Why the hell would you want him to do that?" Jean barely kept a lid on his temper and frustration.

  "Because I was worried, duh," Evangeline made him sound like an idiot. "Who do you think sent him to you?"

  "Oh," understanding dawned as Jean fit the pieces of the puzzle together. "That means he...?"

  "Read the letter," Evangeline said, her voice turning gentle. "Yes. He said he wanted to see you, so I gave him a plane ticket and told him the address of our apartment."

Jean closed his eyes and thanked God for little sisters, unreasonable though they might be. "Thank you,  _ma jolie._ You have my eternal gratitude."

  "I'd rather have all your hoodies, but I'll settle for half."

  "Anything but that."

  "Scrooge."

  "Brat."

Marco's stomach growled, interrupting the sibling's banter. He blushed as Jean stared at him, and then burst out laughing.

  "Okay, I'm gonna hang up now," Jean told Evangeline. "Don't call for the next few hours."

  "Do I get to know why?"

  "Some things," Jean said gravely. "A little sister just doesn't need to know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE YOU HAVE IT. THE DAWN AT THE END OF THE LONG NIGHT. 
> 
> I hope it didn't seem too rushed. I was sort of desperate for them to get together already and just fucking kiss. After 16 chapters... Jean and Marco are finally back together again. Hopefully, this time for good.
> 
> Now, who wants to know what Jean wrote to Marco such that it gave him the courage to see Jean again?
> 
> (EDIT: AGAIN THANK YOU MIZERA YOU DARLING SWEETHEART)


	18. It's For Real, I Swear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean's letter to Marco.

_Marco, my love,_   
  
_I do not know where to begin. There is so much I wish I could tell you in person, but first of all I have to apologize._   
  
_I apologize to you, because I have hurt you and I am now afraid that is beyond repair._   
  
_I apologize to you, because I didn't give you the second chance you needed and deserved, and now I don't have a second chance to tell you that I wish I had._   
  
_I apologize to you, because I didn't see how hard you were trying and hurting, and now I fear that you will never try again._   
  
_Marco, mon chéri, I write this letter not knowing when or if you will ever read it. I am so afraid that even if you do, it is too late. Too late for second chances, too late for trying again. But I want you to know that with me, you will always, always have another chance to try again. If you will let me, I promise not to make the same mistakes as I once did._   
  
_I wish I could go back to that day all those years ago, and I wish I had tried harder to stop you from leaving._   
  
_I wish I could have told you what I really loved about you. More than what I saw. More than your chubbiness (which is adorable as fuck if I didn't make that clear enough before). More than your clusterfucks of freckles, more than that cute button nose of yours, more than your beautiful doe eyes._   
  
_What I loved, and still do six years later, is your soul. It is everything I have ever wanted in a lover. It is you, and I love you._   
  
_Where would we be now, I wonder, if I had told you that sooner? If I had made you stay?_   
  
_I suppose we will never know. What was, is, and always will be. But that does not mean we will never have another chance to find out what could be._   
  
_Marco, my innocent dove, you were never at fault. You are not ugly, or pathetic, or disgusting. You never were, you never will be._   
  
_I was the one with the ugly heart, the pathetic and disgusting soul that couldn't stop feeling sorry for myself. I was so blinded by self-pity, so self-entitled to the selfish idea that I was the only one who had been hurt._   
  
_But if you will have me, miserable bastard that I am, I will never let you go again. I will never let you feel small, or insignificant, or anything less than the wonderful, beautiful, kindhearted person that you are. I will never let anyone put you down, because you are the one and only love of my life, and I am proud to declare it for all the world to hear._   
  
_So Marco, mon cœur, come back to me. I assure you, with all my heart, that it's for real, I swear._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. This is the end of their journey... OR IS IT???


End file.
